Marinthus raised his eyebrows. “Now that, sir, no one has mentioned before. I’ll have to think on it.”
“Is that worth twenty sesterces?” Smiling inwardly with my little triumph, I heard Aurora descending the stairs before I saw her. We all turned as she stormed across the room, stopping in front of Marinthus.
“What have you done with the bag?” she demanded.
Putting up a hand in defense, Marinthus leaned back away from her. “What bag, my lady?”
“Crispina had a leather bag. About as large as a rolled-up sheet of papyrus.” Aurora held up her hands to show the size. “It’s not there.”
“I know nothing about any bag,” Marinthus said, convincingly enough. “What was in it?”
“She said it contained her only hope.”
“So you don’t know what was in it?” I asked her.
Aurora shook her head. “But I know she considered it important. Vitally important.”
“Did you talk to this woman?” I asked Marinthus, feeling in my stomach that what had started as a simple act of kindness was about to take on a different complexion. “Did you find out anything about why she was here or where she was going?”
He straightened the chairs around a table, leaning on each one to take the weight off his hip. “We talked a bit. She told me she was trying to hide from her husband.”
“That’s not right,” Aurora said, perplexity clouding her face. “She told me she was trying to find her husband. You must have misunderstood.”
“No, my lady, I understood her quite clearly. When you run a place like this, you learn when to listen and when not to. With her, I listened.” Marinthus’ voice took on an edge. “She asked me not to tell anybody she’d been here if someone came looking for her.”
“Did she say why she was hiding from him?” I asked.
“She was afraid the man would kill her.”
* * *
Everything is going wrong! Where are Crispina and her son? Why would she tell me one thing and Marinthus another? I was a fool! What is Gaius going to think? He came out here because of me.
And Theodorus. I did not want to see him again. I couldn’t be entirely honest with Gaius about what happened that night. I was desperate to get off the dark makeup I was wearing as part of my disguise when I met Crispina. Even though the bath was closed, I found that the stream beside the taberna makes a pool before it flows into the Tiber. I was bathing there when Theodorus came upon me. I had noticed him watching me earlier.
“Do you need someone to wash your back?” he asked, his teeth flashing white in the dim light.
“No, I’m just taking a quick bath,” I told him.
But he took off his tunic and stepped into the water with me. I didn’t want to scream or draw anyone’s attention. I covered myself as best I could and got out of the water before I had washed off my makeup. I really couldn’t scream because Theodorus is so handsome! A young Apollo or Dionysus. Between his looks and the cold water, I was having trouble breathing. I love Gaius, I truly do, but not because of his looks. His face is a bit too round and his ears larger than they need to be. But he is such a dear man.
Nothing happened between Theodorus and me. I couldn’t…I wouldn’t…but I almost did. He aroused such a longing—an ache—in me. Every woman knows one way to satisfy that feeling, of course, but sometimes even that isn’t enough. If Gaius doesn’t acknowledge his feelings for me soon—and in a very real way—I don’t know what I’m going to do. If this marriage to Livilla actually happens…I may have to leave.
IV
We huddled outside Marinthus’ establishment, using our horses to screen us from prying eyes and ears. I even sent my freedmen to get a drink and relieve themselves.
“He must be mistaken,” Aurora insisted. “I know what Crispina told me.”
I put a hand on her arm. I’d never seen her so agitated about something that did not seem that important. Why did these people matter so much to her? “I’m sure that’s what she told you,” I said. “I don’t know what reason Marinthus might have to say otherwise.”
“But why would she say such different things to different people?”
“She’s the only one who can clear that up,” I said in my calmest tone, “so we’d better find her. To do that, we need to know where she went in that raeda.”
One of my servants returned, so we left the horses with him and walked across the road to the livery stable, where three raedas stood in the yard. A man of about forty was fastening iron hipposandals on a team of horses. The awkward, noisy devices are normally used only when a horse is going to pull a heavy load for some distance or in a place where the animal needs solid traction.
“Are you Justus?” I asked.
Barely looking up from his work, he took in the equestrian stripe on my tunic and Tacitus’. I suspected he would have ignored us entirely if not for those stripes.
“So my father named me, sir. But I’m full up for today.” He tied a knot in the leather strap used to secure the hipposandal and tested it with a jerk.
“I don’t want to hire anything,” I said. “I’d like to ask you about someone who hired one of your raedas yesterday.”
He dropped the horse’s hoof with a clank and stood up. “Sir, I’m a busy man. My time is worth a lot to me.”
I dug into the money pouch sewn inside my tunic and dropped two denarii into his filthy palm. He touched his hand to his forehead.
“What would you like to know, sir?”
“You were hired to drive a woman and a man somewhere yesterday morning.”
“Yes, sir. I was.”
“Who hired you?”
Justus moved around the horse, checking the harness. “Didn’t know him. He came in, told me what he wanted, and paid me. That was all the introduction I needed.”
“Where did you take them?”
“I dropped them at a villa about two miles down this side road up here. The fifth house on the right. Run-down–looking place.”
“Was there a child with them?” Aurora asked.
Justus seemed surprised to have her enter the conversation. “Oh, yes, my lady. A boy, about seven or eight years old.”
“Did the woman seem frightened?” I asked.
“No. Not happy, maybe, but not frightened neither.”
“What about the boy?” Aurora asked.
Justus’ horse stomped and Aurora patted his neck to calm him. Justus seemed impressed. “He clung to the woman. His mum?”
“We think so.”
“I did too. He was a little scared, but not crying or carrying on. About what you’d expect from a child, when he’s not sure what’s going on.”
The horse stomped again and threw his head back. Aurora patted him on the neck and talked to him in a sing-song voice. The animal stood quietly, and Justus studied Aurora through slitted eyes.
“Did the man ask you to wait for him or come back for him?” I asked.
“No, sir.” Justus turned his attention back to me. “I dropped them and left, as I was told to do. They said somebody was meeting them.”
“Did they tell you why they were going out there?”
“The woman said they were thinking about buying the place.”
“Did you see anyone else at the villa?” Aurora asked.
“No, my lady. Place looked deserted.” Justus picked up another hipposandal, leaving no doubt that, as far as he was concerned, the time I’d paid for had run out. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“No,” I said. “This has been helpful.”
“Any time, sir.” He bent over to grasp a hoof.
When we returned to our horses I saw an unfamiliar young man talking with my freedmen. Beside me Aurora whispered, “Oh, no.”
“What’s the matter?”
“That’s Marinthus’ son. I was hoping we could get out of here without seeing him.”
The young man’s face brightened as soon as he saw Aurora approaching. He lifted his hand
to her.
“That’s the son?” I asked her. He was big and handsome, damn him.
“He’s Marinthus the Younger, but his mother calls him Theodorus.”
“ ‘The gods’ gift’? Why?”
Aurora waved and smiled weakly. “His mother, who’s Greek, told me she had almost given up hope of ever having a child, but her prayers were answered. Unfortunately he thinks he’s the gods’ gift to humanity, especially the female portion.”
Theodorus took a few steps and met us in the road. In his early twenties, he was as tall as Tacitus, with the chiseled profile of a statue of Adonis. And he had seen Aurora bathing. I had two good reasons to dislike him instantly.
“My lady,” he said with a slight bow of his head, “what a pleasure to see you again. Are you going to stay with us for a while?”
“Hello, Theodorus. No, we’re just passing through this time.”
“I am sorry to hear that. I was hoping to see more—”
“Do you know anything about the woman and the boy whom Aurora brought here?” I asked, stepping between him and Aurora.
His smile faded as he seemed to notice me for the first time. “Why, no, sir. I spoke to her at dinner the evening before last, but that’s the last time I saw her.”
“Did she say anything about leaving?”
“No, sir. We didn’t have a lengthy conversation.”
“And we don’t have time for one now. Please excuse us.” I took Aurora by the arm, just to show Adonis that I could but he couldn’t.
Without saying any more but glaring at me as much as he dared, Theodorus turned and went back into the taberna.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Two mounting stones were set in front of the taberna, so we were soon back on our horses and heading west.
“You didn’t exactly make a friend of that fellow,” Tacitus said.
“I have other things to worry about,” I said. “To begin with, why would a man have himself and at least two other people driven out into the country and strand themselves like that?”
“He said he was meeting someone. Presumably they would have horses, a wagon.”
“Then why hire Justus’ raeda? Why wouldn’t his associates just meet him at Marinthus’ taberna and pick up him and the woman here? The woman seems to have gone with them of her own volition. They weren’t kidnapping her or doing something they needed to conceal.”
“Why puzzle yourself so much about it?”
“It’s an anomaly,” I said, setting my face toward Ostia, “and anomalies bother me as much as coincidences.”
What had begun as an opportunity to take a pleasant ride and mollify Aurora was showing every sign of turning into a knotty problem. We’d heard two versions of why the woman was on the road. She had left the taberna under odd, if not threatening, circumstances. And something valuable—at least important to her—seemed to be missing. Without thinking, I touched the Tyche ring.
*
When we mounted our horses and set out on the Ostian Way again, the two men who seemed to be following us also mounted their animals, but so did several other travelers. Some passed us, while others continued at a leisurely pace behind us. It was when we turned onto the side road that I became concerned. As everyone else continued toward Ostia, our two donkey-riding shadows turned, staying the same distance as always behind us.
“This road makes a sharp bend up ahead,” I told my party. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
The Empire’s major highways are engineered to be straight, so that troops and government couriers can move as rapidly as possible. Obstacles are demolished, rivers bridged, mountains tunneled through. A side road like this one, though, originated from animal trails and follows the terrain rather than overpowering it. A large outcropping of rock had forced the earliest travelers on this route to veer to the right.
As soon as we were around that bend, two of my freedmen, as I had instructed them, turned their horses into the woods, dismounted, and circled quietly back the way we had come. The rest of us stopped and turned, weapons drawn. Tacitus, my two remaining freedmen, and I blocked the road, with Aurora behind us.
As soon as they came around the bend in the road, the two men stopped and their jaws fell. Without a word they turned their donkeys, kicking the little beasts furiously, only to be confronted by my other freedmen, who stepped out of the woods brandishing their swords.
The man with the scar over his eye held out his hands. “Sirs, please don’t hurt us.”
“I told you it was a mistake to come this way,” the second man said, like a frightened child. “We’ve rode right into a trap.”
“We mean you no harm,” I said. “Dismount and we’ll talk. Try to run and my men will cut your animals out from under you.”
“Yes, sir,” they both said, sliding off their donkeys.
“Turn around and drop your weapons.” I should have told Aurora to turn her head first. Both men raised their tunics up to their armpits. The man with the scar unstrapped a sword. The other man showed that he had no weapon, just a virile member that, in an emergency, might serve as a weapon.
“Who are you?” I demanded, wondering even as I said the words if I would get a truthful answer. I seemed to have ridden into a strange world where people’s stories changed from one moment or situation to the next.
“We’re just poor men, sir,” the man with the scar said, his voice quavering.
“Even poor men have names. I want to know yours.” I nodded and my freedmen poked the men in the back with their swords.
The overly endowed man fell to his knees and raised his hands in supplication. “Please, sir, don’t kill us.” His companion did likewise and added his voice to the cacophony. They reminded me of the buffoons in a farce, overplaying their parts, but I wasn’t laughing.
“We’re not going to kill anyone,” I said. “But I will know who you are and why you’re following us.”
“My name is Segetius,” the scarred man said. He jerked his head toward the other man. “He’s Rufinus.”
“All right, that’s progress. Now, why were you following us?”
“We’re poor men, sir,” Segetius said.
“You’ve said that.” And their paucity of weapons and the donkeys they were riding confirmed it—or made for a good disguise.
“We’re on our way to one of the villas down this road, sir.”
“We’re freedmen from there,” Rufinus broke in.
“We thought we could do better for ourselves in Rome,” Segetius said, “so we left when we were freed eight months ago. We had a bit of work in the city, but we’ve lost it, so we’re going home. To give us some protection, we decided to keep close to any party that looked large enough to scare off attackers.”
“The Ostian Way was easy enough,” Rufinus said. He seemed unclear about what he ought to say next, as though he’d forgotten his line.
“Forgive my friend, sir,” Segetius said. “He’s a bit simple, if you know what I mean. We were worried about this stretch—it’s lonely and so wooded. When you turned onto this road, we thought the gods were with us.”
I turned to Tacitus. “Do you believe them?”
Tacitus shook his head and twisted his mouth, as though considering a hard question. “I would favor tying them to a tree and leaving them at the mercy of the wolves or bears or whatever ravenous beasts roam these woods.”
Tacitus has a knack for sounding utterly serious when he is saying the most ludicrous things. But Segetius and Rufinus didn’t know that. They both began to weep. Segetius shuffled toward me on his knees.
“Oh, sir, please, have mercy!” he wailed.
“Stop your caterwauling!” I said, thrusting my sword down to prevent him from clasping my leg and perhaps pulling me off my horse in his desperation. “No one is going to hurt you. I give you my word.”
“On the honor of your stripe, sir?” Segetius asked.
“Yes.”
That seemed to reassure him. “M
ay I get up, sir?”
“I never told you to kneel, did I?”
“Well, no, sir. I guess you didn’t.” He stood and brushed himself off, signaling for Rufinus to rise also. “As you can see, we are poor, ignorant men. We mean you no harm. May we go now?”
“To which house are you headed?”
Segetius pointed to the south. “The fifth one on the right, sir. That’s our master’s home.”
* * *
How could these men be going to the very same place we are? Not just another house along the same road, but the same house.
As soon as I heard the man Segetius say that, I knew Gaius would be thinking about coincidence and how there is no such thing. Studying his face, it’s clear that he is mulling it over, probably trying to find some connection with Regulus. I wish he could stop worrying about Regulus, although the man has displayed his enmity toward Gaius and his family many times. But what could two freedmen whom we encountered by chance on the road have to do with one of the richest, most powerful men in Rome?
Unless this wasn’t chance.
Is there any such thing as chance? Is everything we do—everything that happens to us—accidental, or is it determined in advance, as the Stoics maintain?
* * *
We let Segetius and Rufinus ride along with us, still at our rear. Once we were underway I turned back and asked Segetius, in Greek, if he and Rufinus were lovers. Nothing in either of their expressions indicated that they understood what I’d said. Tacitus and two of my freedmen chuckled. Aurora, still riding between Tacitus and me, blushed. Segetius seemed the more loquacious of our two shadows, but all he could say was, “Sorry, sir, Rufinus and me don’t speak anything but Latin, and he doesn’t do that very well.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I figured the two of them were far enough behind us, working to keep their donkeys trotting hard and with my freedmen between them and us, so they couldn’t hear what we said. Still, I switched to Greek and lowered my voice when I said to Tacitus, “You know I don’t believe in coincidence. It cannot be mere chance that they’re going to the same house we’re looking for.”
“Gaius Pliny,” Tacitus said patiently, “can’t you admit that, once in the entire history of humanity, something could happen by pure chance?”
The Eyes of Aurora Page 5