A Gladiator's Tale

by Ashley Gardner

  I scraped my bowl to me and downed the stew. I barely tasted it, but I’d emptied my stomach in the alley, and needed to fill it up again.

  “We had better find the other gladiators to make certain they are well.” Cassia observed my slumped shoulders and softened her tone. “Tomorrow, I mean. Do you know where this highborn woman Herakles meets lives?”

  I thought back to what Praxus had said. “North of the Pons Agrippae on the west bank. Near a large winery.”

  “Oh.” Cassia’s eyes widened. “The Villa Flores.”

  I set down my spoon. “You know it?”

  “I do.” Her gaze turned nostalgic. “My mistress and her husband visited it often when she traveled to Rome. My father and I accompanied them from time to time. I know the villa well and the people in it.” A remote smile tugged at her mouth. “I believe I will have no trouble gaining entrance and discovering what has become of Herakles.”

  Chapter 4

  Cassia made this announcement as though gaining entry to the villa of a wealthy woman would be no trouble at all.

  “How?” I demanded.

  Cassia eyed me without distress. “I will tell you all in the morning. You have had a shock, Leonidas, and you should sleep. I cannot go on the moment, so the discussion will keep.”

  I stared at her in frustration, though I knew she was right. I was bone-weary, my eyes sandy, the tiredness that accompanied any agitation coming over me. Cassia went back to marking in her tablets, humming a little tune in her throat.

  I heaved myself to my feet, set the shutters’ boards into their slots in the floor, and went to bed. I’d pry from her what she meant when I woke again.

  Cassia was no stranger to villas, I reflected as I shucked my sandals and settled into my bunk. She’d been raised on a large estate in Campania, away from the harsher world of Roman streets. Her father had been the family’s scribe and accountant, and though a slave, would have lived in better circumstances than most. The man had obviously been able to have a family, though Cassia had never spoken of her mother.

  I drifted off to Cassia’s light voice as she sang something in Greek. I dreamed of her walking in her careful way through the ambulatory of such a villa, high on a hill, with the bay of Napoli spread before her in its blue glory. In this dream, she owned the house and dressed in a matron’s silks with the gold earrings a grateful patrician had given her earlier this year glittering against her hair. A gladiator who looked like me tried to gain entrance to this house and was repulsed by a sneering majordomo, while Cassia looked on serenely.

  When I jerked from sleep, morning had dawned, sunlight pouring through the tiny window above me. Marcianus was helping Cassia open one of the board shutters to the balcony.

  I peeled myself from the bed, scrubbing at my face. Marcianus leaned the unwieldy shutter against the wall with some difficulty.

  I’d slept in my tunic, which I straightened as I padded toward Marcianus in my bare feet.

  “What did you find out?” I asked him.

  “A joyous good morning to you too, Leonidas,” Marcianus said without rancor. “May your ancestors bless this house.”

  I grunted but gave him an apologetic nod. “Didn’t sleep well.”

  “I understand. Ajax was quite a shock.”

  Cassia quickly poured Marcianus watered-down wine and waved him to the stool reserved for guests. A new spray of flowers reposed on the shrine to our ancestors, the water jug was damp with a fresh draw, and sunlight gleamed on the bronze sculpture of a hand studded with blue stones, a gift from the same patrician who’d supplied Cassia’s earrings.

  “I know you want to learn what I found,” Marcianus said in his unruffled manner as he took a sip of wine. “I was correct that Ajax had been dressed in his costume after death. The way the straps left marks—or did not—on his skin, and so forth, tells me this.”

  He paused to drink before he went on. “It appears that he was felled with a blow to the head, There is a large gash in his skull, the bones beneath broken. He might have obtained the wound falling against something hard, including a stone floor, but I do not believe so. It is not a sword wound but made by something long and narrow. His stomach held the remains of a meal, a rather rich one. Meat and apricots, dates, a few other things I could not identify, and interestingly, flecks of gold.”

  Cassia flinched but she dutifully wrote down his words. I, the hardened gladiator, took a quick gulp of wine as I tried not to picture Marcianus rooting around in a man’s stomach, picking over its contents.

  I swallowed and eased out a breath. “Someone fed him a good meal and then hit him when he turned to leave it?”

  “That is entirely possible.” Marcianus nodded.

  “Flecks of gold?” I asked.

  Cassia answered, “Gold leaf. Cakes or fruit can be gilded as decoration. So a hostess can serve her guests golden food.”

  “Gold is poisonous,” Marcianus said cheerfully. “Though the tiny dose of gilt in one meal won’t cause too much harm. In any case, there wouldn’t have been enough time for him to die of that. He was killed before he even was able to digest it.”

  “He dined with a wealthy woman then,” I said. “Or man. After he left the last lupinarius in the Subura?”

  “A lavish supper, or a breakfast.” Marcianus opened his hands. “He hadn’t lain in that alley long—he was still quite clean, and the lane was a mess—but I’d say he met his end night before last or as late as yesterday morning. Poor fellow.” Marcianus let out a breath. “Ajax was not the most congenial of men, but he did not deserve this.”

  Ajax had been arrogant, as most champion gladiators were, every bout survived serving to pump more confidence into him. He’d also, like Herakles, held himself above Romans, saying his tribe, called the Quadi, was far more savage than any of us could hope to be. Ajax had loved flattery and basked in his fame.

  “I can imagine he’d have easily accepted an invitation to dine,” I said. “Ajax liked being celebrated.”

  “And suspected nothing,” Marcianus went on. “As I say, he likely rose from his meal and was hit right away. There is nothing to indicate he fought or struggled.”

  A deliberate murder then. Not a bout gone wrong, not Ajax attacking someone in a pique and being hit too hard in return.

  “Not an accident,” I stated.

  Marcianus shook his head. “It is a slight possibility that he wasn’t meant to be killed. Slight. Someone could have hit him with a length of piping as a joke and exerted too much strength. Or was furious with him and simply wanted to hurt him.”

  Cassia glanced up, her stylus poised. “If we discover where he had the meal, we will likely find who killed him.”

  “Very likely.” Marcianus poured more wine for himself before Cassia could reach for the jug. “He might have been struck down in the street when he emerged from whatever house he was in, but it’s more probable he met his end inside it. His body was clean—a domus or villa would have the space or outbuildings in which to wash him.”

  A chill crept down my spine. “What you mean is someone invited Ajax to dine—or to spend the night with them if the meal you found was breakfast. They fed him well, then as he turned to leave the table or the triclinium, hit him hard enough to kill him. Then they removed whatever clothing he wore, cut up his body, dressed him in gladiator gear, and carted the pieces back to the Subura, where they lined him up as though placing bones in a tomb.”

  I finished, my mouth dry. Cassia and Marcianus had stilled as I’d spoken, the appalling crime becoming more real with my words.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Cassia asked in a quiet voice. “And why?”

  Marcianus pushed away his cup. “This is why I prefer being a medicus. I see the body and what happened to it. I don’t worry myself about what morals a man would lack to be this strangely cruel.”

  That ability to separate his job from the reality of life was how he managed to work for the ludus, I realized. Marcianus focused on sewing up our
wounds, mopping away the blood, and setting broken bones, not on the terrible theatrics of the games.

  Cassia’s stylus made a soft click as she set it down. “The question is—did this killer have such anger at Ajax that they would mock him in death? Or is their focus on gladiators in general?”

  I should have felt great fear or dread as Cassia’s question sank in. Someone in the city of Rome could be hunting gladiators, using this odd method of murder. They might not distinguish between current gladiators and former ones.

  But just as stepping into the arena had a numbing effect on me, as I fixed on survival alone, I felt strangely empty as I returned Cassia’s and Marcianus’s stares.

  “I will hunt down Rufus and Herakles,” I said. “And Regulus.” Regulus, with his great pride, might readily fall into a trap of a banquet put on for him. Though I wondered if Regulus would be foolish enough to turn his back on another. He was pompous but careful.

  “You should,” Marcianus agreed, his briskness returning. “I will report to Aemil and cart Ajax’s body to the ludus for a burial.”

  The organization of gladiators—our collegia—would see that there was a marker for Ajax. We paid into a fund, which footed the cost of burials and small pensions to surviving wives and children. Xerxes’ widow had received a few sestertii from the cache when he’d been killed. Ajax would be buried outside the city walls in the space Aemil had purchased for members of the ludus.

  “I will inquire at the Villa Flores about Herakles,” Cassia said, as though this were a reasonable suggestion. “Leonidas will find Rufus’s wife and make sure Rufus is safe with her.”

  I rose. “No.”

  Cassia sent me a perplexed frown. “I know the people at that villa, as I told you last night. I will be able to find out more on my own.”

  “At a villa where a gladiator could have been given his last meal?” I rested a balled hand on the table. “No.”

  “I have to agree with Leonidas,” Marcianus said. “It will be dangerous for you, in any case. You might not be admitted, or even ejected bodily if your questions infuriate the mistress or master. If Herakles is the lover of the lady of the house, or Ajax was, she will never impart such information to you.”

  Marcianus said the words I wanted to but could not form.

  Cassia regarded us with a patience I’d come to know meant she comprehended far more than anyone else in the room.

  “I do not intend to question the lady of the house at all,” she said. “She’d never answer a slave, and as Nonus Marcianus has stated, would have me turned out of the villa. But I know her servants, some of them quite well. I will not speak to the lady—she will never know I was there.”

  Very likely the lady would not. As a gladiator, whenever I was invited to a patrician’s domus I was admitted to the public rooms, expected to show off my skill, discuss bouts, or take one of the highborn women to bed. I’d never skulk about the kitchen or back rooms of the house with the servants.

  Though a scribe ranked far above a gladiator in the hierarchy, Cassia would be expected to remain in the background with the other household staff, unless requested specifically. I had fame without status, and she had status without fame.

  “It is still dangerous,” I rumbled. “Slaves must tell their master and mistress anything they command, such as why a scribe who worked for their friends in Campania came to interrogate their servants.”

  “The master of the Villa Flores died a few years ago.” Cassia lifted her stylus, one thin lock of hair falling from her knot. “The mistress, Domitiana Sabinus, still lives in the house, though her son in Hispania technically owns it. She has been taking lovers from the ranks of actors, charioteers, and gladiators. So say her servants. They are rather ashamed of her behavior, and I am confident they will say nothing to her about me. She has lost their respect.”

  Cassia’s firm lips told me this was the worst thing a lady of a household could do.

  “Ah.” Marcianus relaxed. “If you have friends to speak to, things might be well.” He turned to me. “She will go only to ascertain whether Herakles is there or has been there, and where he is now.” As I started to speak, Marcianus held up a slim hand. “I will accompany her.”

  “There is no need,” Cassia said quickly. “I can be unobserved on my own.”

  “Nonsense. A physician is always welcome in a patrician’s household. I can say I heard someone was ill or hurt, but perhaps I was sent to the wrong home. The lady will then talk about her own aches and pains or faulty digestion without compunction.”

  Marcianus chuckled, as though we’d find this amusing. Cassia smiled politely but I could see she was annoyed with his insistence.

  “He will go with you,” I declared. “Or I will.”

  Cassia opened her mouth to argue, but she took in the hard set to my jaw and subsided. “Very well. I agree that Nonus Marcianus will be more inconspicuous.”

  “I excel at being inconspicuous.” Marcianus leaped to his feet. “We should go at once. Ajax might have been targeted specifically, but if gladiators are the true quarry, then they must all be accounted for.”

  “There are other ludi in Rome are there not?” Cassia asked, her worry returning. “Perhaps a warning should be sent to them.”

  “Aemil will do so,” Marcianus said. “And if he does not, I will. Rufus’s wife lives in an insula on the Aventine, Leonidas. Go toward the river on the street that runs in front of my house—the insula is beyond where an arch of the Aqua Appia intersects the road. I’ve walked home with Rufus a few times and said good night to him on his doorstep.”

  I wanted to reason that Marcianus would be better to visit Rufus if the two had walked from the ludus together, and I should stay with Cassia.

  But she was right that a hulking gladiator would be obvious at the villa, while she would be able to slip into the servants’ area and out again with the family being none the wiser. Marcianus, while a quiet and modest man, had a firmness about him that few argued with.

  “There and straight back,” I told the two of them. “We will meet again at Marcianus’s and I will help deliver Ajax to Aemil.”

  “Excellent.” Marcianus drained his wine and thumped the cup to the table. “Shall we, my dear? I obtained some new mathematical treatises from Athens that might interest you. I dabble in geometry, but some of it has quite fascinating applications to medicine. We can discuss them on the way if you like.”

  Cassia brightened. She loved to read, and it would be a treat for her to converse about civilized matters with a learned man. If Cassia had been male, she’d have been a sought-after scribe and tutor by now, who’d have curated a library of scrolls for some fortunate patrician. She’d have been much happier. I saw that in her face as she regarded Marcianus.

  The three of us left the apartment together, trudging down the stairs to the street. The wine shop was doing brisk business, the wine merchant lifting an amphora into a hand cart for a burly slave who would trundle it to his master.

  The wine merchant, a slightly built, bald man with thick dark eyebrows, nodded to me as I passed. He seldom spoke to us but quietly accepted our presence and our rent.

  I parted ways with Cassia and Marcianus at the crossroads shrine where the Alta Semita and Vicus Salutis met, I to make my way to the Aventine, and they to travel across the Campus Martius to the far side of the river.

  I decided, but did not tell them, that I would hasten through my visit to Rufus’s wife and venture to the villa to keep my eye on them. I could stay out of sight but be on hand to rescue them if needed.

  Marcianus bade me a breezy farewell. Cassia sent me a suspicious glance when I waved them off without argument, then hurried after Marcianus, already asking him about the treatises he’d read.

  At the bottom of the hill I turned to walk behind the Forum Augusti, its great wall shielding the colonnaded building from the shabby street. An archway led to the forum for those who wished to enter it, but I wanted to avoid the crowds that would be there as
well as in the Forum Romanum.

  I strode through the Carinae and the low valley in the shadow of the Palatine, glancing at the hill and its several domii on top as I went.

  I had not heard from the princeps since my last adventure in his opulent home, but I was neither surprised nor uneasy that he’d not sent for me since. Nero’s focus fixed and then moved on, his obsessions changing from month to month.

  I continued between the Palatine and Caelian hills, past the end of the Circus Maximus, and so to the Aventine.

  The lower slopes of this hill, like most in Rome, were covered with cheap insulae and shops, the shops now thronged with freedmen and slaves buying supplies and food for the day.

  I followed Marcianus’s directions, passing the fountain of the three fish, then his own place. One shutter of his house was open, and I glimpsed Marcia fluttering about inside.

  I wondered briefly if Marcianus saw Marcia as anything but an efficient assistant and unofficial apprentice. Marcianus was not a man of bodily appetites—at least he was not obvious about it—reserving his interests for books, medicine, and languages. But I wondered.

  The street narrowed a few buildings past Marcianus’s, bending to make room for the pillars of the aqueduct soaring above me.

  The insula past this intersection was tall, five stories at least, with two shops on the ground floor, one selling baskets, the other metal boxes and copper vessels. The coppersmith sat at his bench, his hammer striking metal in even strokes, clanking like an out-of-tune bell.

  The basketmaker’s shop was much more quiet; he and his wife and daughter frowned at the reeds in their hands as they wove them with dexterity.

  I paused on the basketmaker’s doorstep and addressed the man. “I’m looking for a woman called Chryseis.”

  The basket weaver regarded me blankly as though he didn’t understand my words. His wife answered for him, in a heavy accent. “That one. She’s been shouting at everyone all day, snarling and swearing out of the window. Why do you want her?”