A Gladiator's Tale

by Ashley Gardner

  Such things were beyond me. Cassia was the sort who pondered questions like a philosopher.

  She continued, “Why were they given a fine meal beforehand? To relax their diligence? Or is it a ritual of some sort?”

  “Gladiators are given a feast the night before the games. The cena libera.” I’d never been able to eat much at them, not wanting to dull my senses with meat and wine.

  “Interesting.” Cassia opened the tablet in front of her and wrote with quick strokes. “It could very well be a ritual. A gladiator’s blood is meant to heal, as you told me. They might be collecting such blood to heal a loved one, or for good luck. We never find blood with the corpses. Perhaps they gave Ajax and Rufus a good meal beforehand as a sort of apology.”

  I was not convinced. “If so, why cut the bodies to pieces, dress them, and leave them for others to find? No, this person is cruel, and crazed.”

  Cassia released another breath. “I am simply trying out ideas. I still would like a look at Chryseis’s warehouse.”

  I would as well. I did not want Cassia to come with me, but she was already bundling up a few tablets into her bag. I knew she’d find her way there with or without my permission, so as usual, I took her with me so I could keep my eyes upon her.

  The rain had ended and the day had warmed slightly, but it was dank as we crossed the wet stones and moved through the crowded Forum Romanum and along the Vicus Tuscus to the Forum Bovarium. Beyond the cattle market, along the river, lay the Emporium and its vast warehouses.

  Boats pulled in and out from the banks of the Tiber as we walked along it, disgorging wares brought up the river from Ostia Antica, shipped there from ports all over the world.

  The Porticus Aemilia drew my eye as it always did when I ventured this far down the river. It could not help but draw anyone’s eye, as the huge warehouse was one of the largest of such structures in all of Rome.

  Fifty barrel vaults ran down its length, with four vaulted levels stair-stepping crosswise up the riverbank. The warehouse had been fashioned entirely of concrete, the ceilings formed by constructing wooden supports inside the walls and the concrete poured over the frame. When the concrete dried and the supports were pulled away, the vaulted ceilings stood.

  The master builder I’d worked for had brought me here when I’d been an ungainly lad, explaining the techniques as proudly as if he’d built the Porticus himself.

  More warehouses flanked the area, including one that was under construction, workers laying bricks that would eventually be covered with concrete. I wanted to linger and watch, but we needed to find Chryseis’s storehouse.

  Cassia discovered it by heading for the nearest well and asking a woman who drew water there where it was.

  She returned to me, triumphant. “There.” She pointed to a smaller warehouse resting on the bank of the Tiber south of where we stood. “Chryseis owns the entire building, but she rents out half of it and uses the other half for her own wares.”

  Impressed with Cassia’s knowledge, I led the way along the river. The area was chaotic, wagons moving from docks to warehouses, small ships and barges being emptied and loaded by shouting teams of men. While deliveries were forbidden to be made within the walls of Rome in the daylight hours, plenty of goods moved to and fro outside them, many to be stored in the warehouses before they were distributed later that night.

  Chryseis’s warehouse lay near a quieter dock, with no barges tethered there. In fact, the entire area was too silent for my taste. The building we headed for had been built near the tall hill formed by discarded and broken pottery. It loomed high, a strange mound made of used amphorae.

  “People have been adding to this pile for the last seventy or more years,” I told Cassia as she regarded the hill in wonder. Very likely her previous excursions to Rome hadn’t included the Emporium and the area around it.

  Cassia stared at the hill of broken pots until I turned her away to Chryseis’s warehouse.

  The building was a miniature of the Porticus Aemilia. Two barrel vaults led back into the hill, one side of the warehouse open to the river. Men worked in one of the vaults, unloading a wagon. They barely noted us as we walked into the other side of the warehouse, which was mostly empty.

  Crates, boxes, and baskets stood on the back walls, with shelves holding smaller items. Amphorae were embedded into the dirt floor, their buried pointed ends keeping them upright.

  The air was damp, smelling of mud, river, and rain-soaked concrete walls. Chryseis herself was not there—I was not expecting her to be—but she’d left no guard to keep others out. I wondered if even thieves were afraid to steal from her.

  “Leonidas?” A familiar voice sounded at my back. “It is you. Well met, well met, indeed. Perhaps you can help me?”

  Chapter 13

  Cassia brightened, and I turned to behold the architectus, Gnaeus Gallus.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, unsure how to greet him.

  Gallus regarded me good-naturedly. He was small and thin, his dark hair thick but graying. He wore a fine linen tunic, and as he had the first time I’d met him, let his loosely draped toga drag on the floor.

  “I have been hired to build a warehouse,” Gallus said proudly. “Not a monumental one, of course, but one that will sit directly next to this. An importer wishes to expand and needs more space for the goods.”

  Chryseis’s new husband’s father was an importer. Had Chryseis decided to build a warehouse for when Daphnus took over his father’s business? Or was she trying to wrest part of that business from the family by marrying into them?

  “What is the name of this importer?” I asked. From Cassia’s expression, she had the same idea.

  “Tertius Vestalis Felix.” Gallus chuckled. “His cognomen means luck. I suppose he is to have married so much money.”

  Cassia stiffened. The name was familiar to me, but for the moment, I could not place it.

  “Does everyone marry for wealth?” I asked distractedly. Rufus had, but also presumably for beauty. My friend Xerxes had found a woman he loved, and though he’d not been able to marry her legally, they’d called each other husband and wife. They’d been together for affection and joy.

  Gallus observed me with amusement. “The wealthy do. They must keep all that lovely money in the family. And hire builders to give them more storage space so that they can make more. It will be a large project.” He eyed me in eagerness. “Now, as to what you can do for me. Would you like a place on my construction team? I could use someone who was trained in building. I can try you out, see what you know, perhaps make you a foreman if we rub along well.”

  A tingle rushed through my body, one similar to that when I’d waited to step out under the shouting masses and begin a fight, but this one was accompanied by a wave of pleasure. I hadn’t felt such a thing in so long I had to take a step back.

  I wanted what Gallus offered more than anything. To be at a building site, helping plan how the work proceeded each day, watching the structure take shape, knowing my hands had guided the stones or laid the brick … It would give me a sense of purpose, fulfill me in a way I hadn’t been in many years. I’d be a real person again.

  At the same time, the idea was terrifying. One of the greatest tragedies of my life had occurred at a building site. Another had taken place in an amphitheater, and both times I’d lost someone dear to me.

  I wanted what Gallus offered, and at the same time, wanted to thrust it away with dizzying force.

  “Do consider it,” Gallus said, noting my hesitation. “I’d be the talk of Rome, with my gladiator who knows all about structural forces.”

  “I will think it over.” I swallowed, unable to explain. “When will you start?”

  “A few weeks from now. That is, if we can clear the site. There are always complications. Owners not giving permission until the last possible moment, marshy patches that have to be drained, any soft soil dug away, and there is always a spot that is sacred to someone, or was sacred to them sever
al hundred years in the past. Not that I want to offend a god or the ancestors.” Gallus touched the wall he stood next to as though to appease any gods hanging about the place.

  A few weeks would give me time to ponder. I could see Gallus was disappointed that I did not accept right away, but he didn’t pursue the topic.

  “Why are you here, Leonidas?” Gallus asked breezily. “Retrieving a shipment?”

  I paused a mere instant before deciding to tell him the truth. Gallus had proved to be trustworthy and helpful in the past. “Discovering if someone was killed here.”

  Gallus blinked and then glanced about wildly, as though ready to run. “Killed here?” He let out a breath. “By the gods, Leonidas, you were looking into a death the first time I met you. Is it your profession now?”

  “Gladiators are being hunted. My lanista asked for my help.”

  “Gladiators … oh, yes, I heard about the one who was found in the insula. Limbs and blood everywhere. My, my.” Gallus wiped his forehead with the frayed end of his toga. “Too awful for me. It’s one thing for gladiators to battle each other in the games—which I care not to watch—quite another for one to be killed in a person’s home.”

  Cassia broke in. “Whatever tale you’ve heard is an exaggeration. There was no blood and the body was quite neat. We are searching for where he actually was killed.”

  A man of the Equestrian class could strike a slave for speaking to him without leave, but Gallus only regarded her thoughtfully.

  “Why do you search here, young Cassia?” he asked in curiosity. “If murderers are lurking about the Emporium, I hardly want to start work on my site in such a lonely spot.”

  Cassia indicated the space around us with a slim hand. “The dead man’s wife owns this warehouse.”

  “And you think she killed him? Is that likely?” Gallus scrubbed the top of his head, his toga still clutched in his hand. “A woman could hardly murder a great hulking gladiator, could she?” He shifted his gaze between Cassia and me as though trying to imagine her sending me to the ground.

  “Not without help,” I said.

  “Or the killers used this warehouse to point at Chryseis,” Cassia supplied in her quiet voice.

  “How horrible.” Gallus touched the wall in an appeasing way again. “Have you found anything?”

  “Not yet.” I turned away, wanting to finish the search as soon as possible. The air here chilled me and not because of the cool weather outside.

  I left Gallus and Cassia and moved to the far end of the warehouse. Its roof had been formed similarly to the one at the Porticus Aemilia—two vaults stepped up the hill, with an open space at the top of the walls of the second vault to provide light.

  Even so, I wished I’d brought a lamp. Flame was dangerous in a warehouse, but with the rainy weather today, it was difficult to see into the corners without extra illumination.

  But no matter how much I scoured the floor, I found no damp patches at all, no water, no blood. The shelves were neat and mostly bare, as though Chryseis sold her shipments on as soon as she received them. Goods sitting on shelves brought in no money, I supposed, and Chryseis was the sort who’d demand payment as soon as possible.

  Not until I reached a gathering of crates on the left side of the building did I find signs of a disturbance. Mud had been tracked in liberally by workers throughout the warehouse, but this section had been scraped clean. I bent down and lifted from the floor a tiny object pushed against the corner of a crate.

  It was a feather, broken and limp. I brushed mud from it with my fingers.

  The feather hadn’t come from a bird, at least, not recently. The plume was the distinct glossy black of a gladiator’s helmet.

  Cassia, with her uncanny knack of knowing when something was amiss, was beside me in a moment, her warm breath brushing my arm.

  “It is like the other I found,” she said in excitement. Different color, but same shape and thickness.

  I clenched the feather, trying to remain calm. “Chryseis might have been shipping in plumage to sell to helmet makers.”

  Cassia sent me a skeptical look. “The chances of a feather dropped here matching the one in the insula, and both matching the ones in Rufus’s helmet, are too great to be ignored. Where would the killer find a gladiator helmet, in any case?”

  “From Aemil?” I suggested. “He keeps the gear for the games locked away. It’s costly.”

  “Aemil would notice if some went missing, wouldn’t he? And know if the ones on Ajax and Rufus came from his storeroom?”

  Aemil had said nothing about it, but perhaps he’d been too unsettled to check. The equipment hadn’t looked familiar to me, but I didn’t pay attention to anyone else’s gear except to look for weak spots on my opponent.

  “If the armor was stolen from Aemil that would mean someone at the ludus is involved.” I felt ill as I said this. We always knew we’d be expected to battle one another in the games, yes, but in a fair fight. Not render a fellow gladiator insensible, kill him, and leave his pieces around Rome. Degraded, dishonored.

  “I didn’t see Ajax’s body,” Cassia said. “But Rufus’s helmet and greaves looked new, not battered from bouts.”

  I opened my hand to stare down at the feather. It was crisp and bright in spite of the mud, no sand from the arena caught in its spikes.

  Gallus, who’d followed Cassia, peered at the feather with interest. “Where does your lanista acquire all the gear? Or is it donated by whoever sponsors the games?”

  “He orders from an armorer called Volteius,” I kept my gaze on the black quill. “Aemil tells him exactly what to make to fit each of us.”

  “You could always pay him a visit,” Gallus said. “Find out whoever ordered the equipment, and there is your killer.” He finished, pleased with himself.

  A good idea, but I wasn’t as confident. The killer could hire men to do anything for him or her, and hired men were not always easy to trace.

  “Aemil’s armorer is in the Transtiberim,” I said. “Not far over the river.”

  “I will walk with you if you are going there now,” Gallus said. “I don’t fancy staying where a man might have been murdered.”

  There was nothing to indicate whether Rufus had been killed at this spot or only butchered, if even that. Or perhaps the helmet and greaves had merely been stored here. Lugging Rufus in and out would have involved a large cart and much secrecy.

  I did not object to Gallus accompanying us, and we left the warehouse and headed up the river for the Pons Sublicius. No one in the other half of the warehouse noted us leaving or asked our business. They went on with hauling things in and out, oblivious. Not until we reached the Porticus Aemilia did I see guards, but except for a glance at me, they did not stop us.

  If this was the usual state of things at the warehouses, then likely no one had paid any mind to those lugging Rufus there the day before. Chryseis’s warehouse was out of the way, out of sight of the usual Emporium traffic, and her tenants in the other half of her warehouse seemed content to mind their own business.

  The house of the armorer who turned out leg greaves and helmets for gladiators and breastplates for legionnaires lay near the western edge of the Transtiberim, where hills gave way to marsh. The sound of hammers pounding on bronze reached us long before we turned up at the house’s gate.

  Smoke rolled out from somewhere in the courtyard, and a bony young man, an apprentice, opened up to our knock. The lad recognized me and grinned.

  “Have you come to outfit yourself for exhibition bouts?” he asked eagerly. “You’re a champion, Leonidas. You had Regulus without a doubt in your last fight. Say you haven’t truly retired.”

  “I have,” I said, then softened my tone at his disappointment. “I still train at the bath houses, though. A man never knows when he’ll need to fight.”

  “I hope you’re back in an arena soon. Why are you here, then, if you’re not buying armor?”

  “To see your master about armor he made for s
omeone else.”

  The youth gave me a puzzled look but gestured for me to follow him. Gallus shuffled behind me, glancing with interest at the breastplates, helmets, and assorted arm, leg, hand, and foot guards that were lying on benches, shelves, and tables around the courtyard in various stages of production. Men stripped to the waist worked metal both in the courtyard and in open-fronted sheds.

  “Beautiful things.” Gallus paused to admire a shin guard that had been embossed with the portrait of a reclining goddess. “Made for deadly combat, but works of art.”

  “My master is the best,” the lad said proudly.

  I watched a man fashioning what must be a sword. He pounded and pounded the edge with a hammer, then heated the metal in a pit of fire before laying it aside to cool slowly. Unlike iron, which was worked when molten, bronze would crack if the metal was too hot.

  The apprentice led us into a room that wasn’t much larger than one of the sheds. A thickset man in a tunic was carefully tracing a design with a stylus on a thin sheet of bronze.

  “Who is it, and what do they want?” he barked without looking up.

  “It’s Leonidas the Spartan.”

  At the lad’s excited words, the man, Volteius, raised his head. He had a flat face, the nose also flat as though his entire head had been squashed against one of his own breastplates. Two shrewd eyes peered at me from under a shock of graying dark hair.

  “Are you placing an order?” Volteius demanded. “Or picking up one? Did Aemilianus send you? Why are so many people in here?”

  “Admiring your excellent work, sir,” Gallus said quickly. “I’m Gnaeus Gallus, builder. I may have need of bronze adornments.”

  “Talk to my scribe, then. What do you want, Leonidas? I’m busy.”

  Cassia, as usual when we went anywhere public, faded behind me and became an unmoving bundle. She simulated a meek, obedient slave, but I knew she listened to every word said around me, storing them all in her memory, and would ask pointed questions when she noted everything down later.

  “I’m not here to retrieve an order,” I said. “But to ask about one you filled recently.”