A Gladiator's Tale

by Ashley Gardner

  “She’s the wife of a friend,” I extemporized.

  “Oh, yes, the gladiator.” The wife’s lip curled. The husband and daughter continued to weave, eyes on tasks, in complete silence. “He’s been in and out of here for days, the two of them bellowing at each other. He finally shut up, but she keeps yelling. On the fifth floor, dear. Fortune go with you.”

  A small statue of the goddess Fortuna sat at their front door. I touched it for luck, thanked the woman, and ducked into the cool darkness of the insula, beginning my ascent.

  Chapter 5

  The staircase to the insula’s first floor was well made, the steps outlined in tile. A mosaic depicting a hunting scene lay on the landing between two polished wooden doors with bronze hinges and round knobs in their very centers.

  The decor deteriorated as I rose through the next levels. No more tile graced the stairs, and the stone crumbled as I stepped on it. The walls to either side of me had letters scratched into them, crudely done by those with an idle moment. A sketch of a man entering a lady from behind dominated the third-floor landing.

  At the top of the fifth flight, I found two doors, both with worn boards, their hinges and knobs black with age. One of the doors was open, the other fixed with a pristine new lock.

  I paused on the landing. The stairs went on for another level, and an icy draft poured from cracks in the roof on the next floor.

  “Chryseis?” I asked into the open door.

  The door behind me slammed open, and a woman of great beauty appeared on the threshold. She had black hair, naturally curled—the thick mass was no wig—that framed the face of a goddess, one a sculptor would want to capture. Dark eyes like hard onyx glared at me.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was sharp, brittle.

  “Are you Chryseis?” I asked her.

  “Who’s asking?” She looked me up and down. “Oh, gods, it’s Leonidas, isn’t it? The one who was freed?”

  I nodded. “I—”

  “If you’re after Rufus, he isn’t here.” She leaned against the doorframe, one arm above her head, a seductive pose, but her gaze was flinty. Her stola was fastened at only one shoulder and skimmed a body of sultry curves, but Chryseis herself was anything but inviting. “You didn’t come to apologize for him, did you? Save your breath. Tell him he can have his tarts, but he doesn’t get a soft bed here at the same time. Understand? Tell him.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” I interjected when she paused for breath. “No one has. When did he leave here?”

  Chryseis didn’t appear in the least worried that her husband might be missing. “Last night. Do you mean Rufus hasn’t returned to the ludus? I’ll wager Aemil will beat him something awful.” Her eyes gleamed in anticipation, but her mouth remained a straight line.

  “He didn’t,” I said, uneasiness rising. “When exactly did he leave? Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “He didn’t have to, did he?” Chryseis snapped. “He’s got two tarts in the Transtiberim, above a wine shop off the Via Aurelia. He thinks I don’t know where they live, but I do. They share the room, and he has both of them. He says he’ll stop, but he never does. I don’t know what he sees in those flat-chested, gnarled-haired nobodies. Tell him if he doesn’t drop them, he’ll never see this again.”

  She slid the loose stola from her shoulder and caught it at her waist, baring her plump, perfectly round breasts, dark nipples stark against her skin. Sculptors would want to capture those as well.

  I pretended not to notice. “It is important I find him.”

  “Is it?” Chryseis took a step toward me, but her voice was no softer. “Would you like me, Leonidas?” She glanced into the apartment behind her.

  I remained rooted in place, and her eyes flickered in surprise.

  “Do you prefer men?” Chryseis restored her stola with quick, efficient movements, clasping the fabric at her shoulder with a gold fibula. “If you are after Rufus, good luck. He won’t look at you. He can’t pull himself out of those two whores.”

  I did not answer, letting her believe what she wished. I’d had little interest in women—or men for that matter—in the last few months, my wenching days over. The numbness that had settled over me after winning the rudis had made my bed only for sleeping.

  But even if I’d been as randy as the youth I once was, Chryseis wouldn’t tempt me. She had great beauty, radiated it, but at the same time, her coldness cut like an obsidian knife. She was the sort who wouldn’t enjoy a lover for his own sake but for how she could control him and what she could make him do.

  I’d met women whose faces were plain to the point of ugliness, but they’d been warm and caring, and I ceased noticing they were not lovely. They’d been far more alluring and desirable than Chryseis, who might as well be carved of marble. All the beauty and none of the warmth.

  “If Rufus returns, tell him to go to the ludus at once,” I said.

  Chryseis’s perfect brows rose. “Aemil is that angry, is he? Perhaps I’ll go with Rufus, to see what Aemil does to him.”

  “Just so he reaches it.” I debated telling her about Ajax, but I wondered what good it would do. She might wish the same fate on Rufus, or she might panic and run for the cohorts.

  “Good day, Leonidas.” Chryseis folded her arms, her bosom pressing the translucent fabric. “If you want to have me, come back, and then I’ll tell Rufus all about it.”

  I had no wish to be a bone between this woman and Rufus. I gave her no farewell, only turned from her for the stairs.

  The open doorway across from Chryseis’s darkened, and a girl of about ten summers peeped out. The smell of something boiling wafted behind her. The girl had flyaway hair and a too-thin body, and she blinked rapidly when she saw me.

  I gave the girl a polite nod and started downward. Behind me, Chryseis made a snort of disgust and slammed her door.

  The girl was still watching me when I reached the next landing, staring at me with curious dark eyes. I nodded at her again then descended, my footsteps falling in with the rhythm of the coppersmith’s hammer below.

  I thanked the woman in the basket shop, her husband and daughter remaining hunched over their work, and walked on, heading for the Transtiberim, in search of Rufus’s mistresses.

  The Pons Sublicius, an ancient bridge, crossed the Tiber near the Porta Triemina, a gate through which I’d departed Rome on a journey to Ostia Attica not long ago, escorting a retired senator.

  The bridge had pilings of stone but the structure itself was made of wood, rickety and old, often repaired. As I crossed, I had a good view of the Pons Aemilius not far upstream—an arched stone bridge that was far more substantial.

  The Transtiberim swallowed me as I stepped off the other end of the Pons Sublicius. Its many buildings blocked the sight of the river, and also of the nearby Naumachia, a manmade lake for the staging of mock naval battles.

  The popina just off the Via Aurelia had lettering on its outside walls and what was meant to be a Greek painting of battling heroes. A tiny staircase led upward beside the open counter, and I climbed it on the chance it directed me to the right apartment.

  I heard squealing female laughter as I reached the first floor, and I knocked with my fist on the rickety door.

  Footsteps pattered toward it. “Who’s there?” a woman cried, far more eagerly and curiously than Chryseis had.

  “Leonidas. Friend of Rufus.”

  The flimsy door shook as it was pulled open, and a small young woman with uncombed brown hair grinned at me. “It really is Leonidas the Spartan,” she all but shouted as she opened the door all the way. “Welcome, Leonidas. Our humble home is honored.”

  The home was truly humble. One room with uneven stone walls and a slanted stone floor greeted me, the only light and air coming from a window set high in the wall. In this dim interior were a table and stools and a single wide pallet.

  Another young woman with similar features to the first jumped up from the table, and a slim young man sat cross
-legged on the pallet, a jug in his hand. I saw no sign of Rufus.

  “Welcome,” the second woman said. “Gaius, turn loose that wine and pour Leonidas a cup.”

  The first young woman took me by the arm and led me to the table. “We have bread, freshly baked. And grapes if Gaius hasn’t eaten them all. He is our cousin but thinks he’s our paterfamilias, the brat.”

  I allowed her to sit me down. The second woman poured me wine from the jug Gaius had readily handed her while the first shoved a much-mended plate of bread at me and a basket that held a few grapes.

  “I am looking for Rufus,” I managed to say.

  The first woman’s face blossomed into a smile. “Did his wife send you? If so, we won’t tell. I’m Merope, by the way. She’s Martolia, my sister.” She jerked her thumb at the second young woman who gave me a good-natured nod.

  I took a polite sip of the wine, which was sour and oily tasting. “I visited Chryseis, but she did not know where Rufus was.”

  The two girls burst out laughing. “You met Chryseis? Do you understand now why Rufus likes to stay with us? He’ll break himself to pieces on her.”

  “I think he likes variety,” Gaius said quietly from the pallet.

  Martolia threw a shriveled grape at him. “Misery-maker. Rufus arrives morose and leaves much happier.”

  “He’s a good man, is Rufus,” Merope told me. “When Gaius was run down by a cart and broke his arm, Rufus carried him to a physician and paid the man to set his bone and give him concoctions to make him sleep. Show him your arm, Gaius.”

  Gaius obediently lifted a thin arm that looked whole and healthy. “I never said he wasn’t kind. Just that he could leave his wife if he was that unhappy with her.”

  “He doesn’t, because she has money.” Martolia resumed her seat at the table and leaned toward me. “Much, much money.”

  Chryseis had described the sisters as flat-chested, gnarled-haired nobodies. The two were thin, showing that a feast of bread and grapes was rare, and their hair hung in unkempt hanks. They wore tunics that were far more modest than Chryseis’s stola but much mended, like their plain ceramic plate.

  For all that, the sisters bathed me in smiles and offered me what little they had. They were as excited to see me as if I’d been a wealthy patrician gracing their tiny home.

  “Chryseis has money?” I asked in bewilderment as Martolia poured me more wine. “She lives high in an insula on the Aventine. Rufus has been trying to persuade her into a better place.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t like to spend money,” Merope declared. “She likes to keep it. She owns a warehouse in the Emporium and is part owner of a ship that runs spices. She has a fortune tucked away. Why do you think Rufus wanted to marry her?”

  “Why did she want to marry Rufus?” I thought that the more baffling question. Rufus was not the best-looking man, his granite-like face having been caved in too many times, and his voice loud and grating. Chryseis had beauty.

  Gaius broke in, “She wanted a gladiator at her beck and call. Wanted to boast to her friends about it, I suppose.”

  I thought of the brittle woman in the doorway of the apartment, and the chill wind coming down the stairs from the floor above. Chryseis likely did want to brag that she’d tamed a vicious gladiator, and Rufus had probably thought he’d landed in soft living.

  Rufus, as a free man who’d made a contract with Aemil, could marry if he liked—perhaps he’d chosen Chryseis to pad his retirement. Then maybe Rufus had, too late, realized she was tightfisted, and too late Chryseis realized she couldn’t control Rufus at all.

  “How did you two meet him?” I asked the sisters.

  “Gaius did,” Merope said. “Rufus came into the popina, and Gaius works there. Gaius became his lover first then he introduced him to us.”

  “Gladiators stink,” Gaius declared, then flushed as he caught my eye. “At least Rufus does. So I foisted him off on my cousins.”

  “We like him,” Martolia said. “We send him off to the baths and then he smells fine. Why do you need to speak to him, Leonidas? Can’t you talk to him at the ludus?”

  I pondered what to tell them. I hated to introduce the tragedy of Ajax into this lighthearted room, but I also wanted them to be aware of the danger.

  “Aemil is looking for him. He didn’t return when he was supposed to.”

  The two women appeared puzzled. “Then he’s with Chryseis,” Merope said. “He has to spend some time with her so she won’t disinherit him.”

  “She has not seen him, and I am concerned,” I said. “So is Aemil.”

  Merope lost her cheerful smile. “What is it, Leonidas? What has happened?”

  I let out a breath, choosing my words carefully. “The gladiator, Ajax, was killed last night. Murdered.”

  The warmth drained out of the room with a swiftness of a winter storm. Merope and Martolia drew nearer to me, and Gaius went silent, his gaze on mine.

  “Someone killed him?” Merope whispered. “In a fight?”

  “No.” I did not want to tell them the details, so I closed my mouth.

  Merope and her sister had quicker minds than the wealthy Chryseis. Merope’s lips quivered. “And you are afraid this has also happened to Rufus?”

  “I don’t know. I will feel better if I find him.”

  The young women exchanged fearful glances. Rome was a dangerous city. The desperate preyed on any they could, and a group could bring down even the toughest man.

  Merope swallowed. “We will search for him.”

  “No,” I said at once. “Tell me where he liked to go, and I will search.”

  “The three of us can do it more quickly,” Merope countered. “We know every place Rufus might hide, places you will never find. We will look and send word to the ludus.”

  “Send word to me on the Quirinal.” I explained to them the location of the wine shop and the apartment above it. “Tell me or Cassia.”

  Martolia’s curiosity flickered above her alarm. “Who is Cassia?”

  I cleared my throat. Explaining Cassia was never easy. “A scribe who works for me.”

  “Scribe?” Martolia repeated. Both girls and Gaius turned to me with interest.

  “She’s a friend and very smart.” I rose. “Thank you for the wine. If you find Rufus, keep him here if he won’t return to the ludus, and inform me.”

  The young women nodded, and Gaius watched me in concern.

  “We will begin at once,” Merope promised. “Thank you, Leonidas.”

  I paused at the doorway. “Thank me for what?”

  Merope gave me a tiny smile. “For coming to us. For not dismissing us because we aren’t rich shrews.”

  I gazed about the small room with its crude furniture and few carefully kept belongings. The sisters huddled together, and Gaius cracked his knuckles, as though trying to keep himself from fearing the worst.

  I did understand why Rufus preferred this place. It held laughter, affection, and caring, instead of miserly chill.

  “You deserved to know,” I said. “Please be careful. Someone very dangerous is out there.”

  The three sobered again and agreed.

  I had an idea they would be very resourceful, but I also felt a qualm as I left them. I hoped I could run Rufus to ground so the two spirited ladies and their cousin could receive him here in peace.

  As I made my way northward toward the Pons Agrippae and the villa Cassia and Marcianus were visiting, I checked every popina and eating shop to see if Rufus was enjoying food or drink in them or sleeping in one of their back rooms.

  No one I spoke to had seen him. Rufus was a frequent guest at these places, but he had not visited any in the last few days.

  I told myself that Merope and Martolia were correct that they’d know more hidden places Rufus might retreat, and left the Transtiberim to them.

  I followed a path alongside the river, joining farmers and merchants who headed for their villages. More and more farmland had been bought up closer to Rome so
the rich could have vast villas with plenty of space, driving the farmers farther and farther out. But now those villas were becoming cramped themselves as developments in the city grew.

  The Villa Flores had so far managed to stave off the invasion of insulae, shops, popinae, and other domii. It sat by itself at the top of a low hill, and several tiers of gardens stepped down toward the Tiber from its rear walls. I spied an ambulatory—a colonnaded walkway—that led from the garden and disappeared around the far side of the house.

  The garden contained rows of trees and shrubbery, bare now for winter, but in the summer, the lush growth would more or less hide the entire house from the road that led to it.

  I approached a gate in a wall that lined the street. The wall was plain on the outside, dusty from the sand thrown up by the feet of travelers both human and beast. Its gate was tall, a grill closed off by a hatch. Trees showed over the top of this wall, promising quiet, soothing pathways within.

  Before I could decide what I should say to the door slave after I knocked on the gate, bolts drew back and the ponderous wooden structure swung open.

  Three men I recognized walked out, their beefy bodies and knives in their belts proclaiming they were bodyguards.

  Behind them strode a man I also knew. His name was Sextus Livius, and he’d once declared to me that he was one of the wealthiest men in all of Rome.

  Dark eyes under thick black hair widened when he saw me. “Leonidas?” he asked in surprise. “What by all the gods brings you here?”

  Chapter 6

  I wanted to ask Livius the same question. “Business,” I answered quickly.

  Livius’s gaze skewered me. As when I’d met him a month ago, he wore a plain tunic made of fine linen with a cloak draped carelessly over his arm and wristbands of beaten gold.

  “What business is that?” he asked good-naturedly, but I could see he expected me to answer. Wealthy men liked to be obeyed, even ones who’d started life as slaves.

  I glanced behind him at the wide garden and the columned path that led to the villa, and decided to confide in him. He’d been helpful before and had resources that I never would.