The softness of her touch surprised me. I’d never had anyone touch me like this—I’d been massaged by massive men digging soreness out of my muscles, or women bringing me to a cockstand, but never a light caress that tingled warmth across my skin.
Slowly, slowly, my fingers relaxed, and then they loosened. My thumb unlocked, and with it, my death grip on the sword.
As soon as my hand went slack, Cassia slid the hilt out of my grasp.
Ice cold fear hit me. I started to lunge for the sword, but Cassia had already turned away, and I brushed empty air.
“I will put it here.” Cassia laid the sword on the hanging shelf. “You can reach it at any time.”
She was humoring me, but I experienced a profound sense of relief. The rudis was where I could touch it, and remind myself what it meant.
Cassia came back to me, her hands clasped over her long linen stolla. “What …” The word trailed off, and she swallowed. “What do you wish from me?”
She whispered the question, and I heard, through my haze, her fear return. Fear that went to the bone. I knew such fear, had experienced it myself.
I took the final steps to the pallet and nearly fell onto it. I turned my head so I could look at her with a single open eye. “Do you want dinner?” It was well past time for breakfast.
Cassia had gone wan, but she gave me a faint nod.
“Fetch it from the popina we passed,” I ordered. “Bring me bread if there is any.”
Cassia remained frozen in place, her very dark hair falling in curls about her face. She was pretty, in a way, in spite of her crooked nose and thin lips.
That was the last thought I had before oblivion took me.
I dreamed. Regulus fought me, rage in his eyes. My sword and arm guard were gone, and his blade jabbed and jabbed at me until I bled from a hundred holes.
His sword rose, ready to dive straight into my eye.
I roared up to meet him, grabbing the descending arm in a merciless grip …
And found myself looking into the terrified brown eyes of Cassia.
Chapter 3
I released Cassia in an instant. In another second, I’d have broken her wrist.
“Dreaming,” I said as I sat up, catching my breath. “Never reach for me when I’m asleep. Floriana uses a stick.”
“Floriana?”
“Woman of the house where I slept last night.” I gestured vaguely, reminding Cassia of where she’d met me this morning.
If it was still this morning. The sun slanted into the room, partially blocked by buildings around us. I had no idea of the time or if this was even the same day.
“It is the tenth hour.” Cassia remained very still, out of my reach. “You’ve slept a long time. I brought food for you.”
I rolled up from the pallet, my tunic musty. I needed to bathe. I was also hungry. “Bread?” I recalled asking her to fetch that.
Cassia had backed away when I’d risen, and now she moved to the table. I stumbled after her in bare feet, too hungry to bother with sandals.
The table was now lengthwise near the open door to the makeshift balcony. One stool rested on the side of the table, and the other had been tucked into the corner.
Covered bowls and several baskets had been neatly placed on the table, along with an eating bowl and a spoon. I lifted the cloth from one basket and found a loaf of the round Roman bread we consumed daily. The other basket held olives, plump and shining.
The covered bowls contained lentil stew and another stew with meat in it. The smallest pot held a smelly, fishy concoction called garum.
I immediately dished out the lentils and tore off a hunk of bread, sitting down to enjoy my feast. A handful of olives went into my mouth. I didn’t touch the meat dish or the garum.
“Are you not eating?” I asked once I’d swallowed a few spoonfuls.
Cassia had perched on the stool in the corner, hands in her lap. “You will allow me to eat?”
“Why would I not allow you to eat?” I said around my next mouthful. “If you eat, you stay alive. Besides, you carried all this back. You must be hungry.”
Cassia rose and slid her stool inch by inch closer to the table. She removed a smaller eating bowl and spoon from a sack that had been behind the table and carefully set the bowl in the exact center of her side.
As I continued to inhale the lentil soup, which was decent if not the best I’d ever had, she delicately ladled out a portion of the meat stew.
“Eat all of that if you like,” I said.
The ladle hesitated. “There is enough for both of us.”
I shook my head. “I don’t eat much meat. I’ll have this.” I lifted my bowl to my mouth, drained the liquid, and spooned in more of the lentils.
Neither of us touched the garum.
“Eat that too,” I said, pointing to it. “I won’t.”
Cassia dipped a minuscule portion of bread into her meat soup. “No, thank you. I dislike garum.”
Most Romans loved the stuff and ate it by the bucketful. I was considered odd for not doing so.
“I don’t like it either.” I tore off a huge hunk of bread. “It’s disgusting.”
Something glinted in Cassia’s gaze. “I rather loathe it, in fact.”
“I more than loathe it. I think it should be buried in a field and then the field burned.”
We both eyed the pot.
“I bought it because I thought you’d eat like a Roman.” She studied the innocent round-lidded pot for a moment. “What shall we do with it?”
“Throw it into a sewer,” I grunted. “No one will notice.”
A tiny smile touched Cassia’s mouth, transforming her from frightened rabbit to human being. “It shall be done.”
I pictured it—in the dark of the night, a heavily cloaked woman tiptoeing through the cart-laden streets with the pot of garum under her arm, furtively glancing about before she shoved it through a hole in the pavement to the sewers beneath us. For the first time in a long while, I wanted to laugh.
“How did you pay for all this?” I asked. “I thought we had little money.”
Cassia pushed aside her half-eaten stew and opened a tablet, revealing rows of scratches in the wax. “The landlord of the tavern and also the baker gave the food to me with the understanding that we will pay for a ten-night’s worth of meals at the end of these coming ten days. Next time, we will pay ahead and have whatever we wish until our credit comes to an end.”
“Pay with what?” Any time I’d been out on my own and hungry, I’d bought bread or a salad with the few coins in my belt pouch. If I had no coins, I simply stayed hungry until I returned to the ludus.
“The money you will make as a guard, or teaching others to fight, or whatever it is you do.”
“No one has hired me,” I pointed out.
“Not yet.”
I lifted my bowl and spooned the remainder of the lentils into my mouth. I chewed noisily and swallowed, then wiped out the bowl with the last of the bread. “Aemil always made arrangements with people and then told me to go do the job.”
“Because you were a slave. Now you’re a freedman. You find your own work.”
I hadn’t the least idea how. “Should I stand in the street until someone asks me to do something? I think they will mostly tell me, loudly, to get out of the way.”
Cassia took up her stylus. “I admit to you, I do not know much about the ways of the city. I lived in my mistress’s villa, which was far out in the country, and went into Neapolis only occasionally. A lovely city. Nothing like Rome. Neapolis is a very old town, settled by Greeks long ago. Like Herculaneum.”
I’d been to both places when hired out for games, but I remembered nothing remarkable about either.
“I could ask Aemil.” I did not want to go back to the ludus, my hand out, when I’d snarled at Aemil that I’d never return. He’d informed me with confidence that I would.
Cassia must have seen my reluctance, because she said quickly, “I will find o
ut.”
I studied her, a neat young woman with her hair combed into a tidy coil, her fingernails clean and pared. I’d already dropped broth onto my tunic while hers was spotless. I could not imagine this dainty morsel striding out finding work for a gladiator.
“How?”
“The family I worked for had many connections in Rome. Those people would come to Campania, or, rarely we would travel here. I know the slaves and freedmen and freedwomen who work in their houses. If a patrician needs a bodyguard, he will send a slave out to the Forum to look about and employ one for him. I will go to the Forum and see who I find there. I am bound to recognize someone, and if their masters do not need your services, they might point me to one who does.”
I supposed her reasoning logical. I’d never had to think about such things before. I’d only done for so long, that I knew nothing else.
“In the morning, then.” I flexed my empty hand and glanced quickly at the wooden sword on the shelf, as though reassuring myself it was still there.
She shook her head. “This afternoon. Those left still looking to hire a guard will be growing worried and won’t wish to return home until they’ve fulfilled their commission. I will likely be able to fetch a better fee than if I wait until morning.”
More things I’d not thought of. “Be in before dark. The streets of Rome at night are not safe.”
Cassia shivered, but her determination to do as she outlined did not dim.
With the darkness would come cold. We’d want blankets.
“You will need a place to sleep,” I observed.
I cast my gaze along the empty floor, wondering where that would be. When Cassia didn’t answer, I lifted my head.
She watched me, the trepidation in her eyes, which had subsided over the meal, returning.
She expected me to order her to sleep with me, I realized. Or at least pleasure me until I was tired of it, when she’d curl up on the floor until I wanted her again. She expected it, and I could clearly see the thought terrified her.
The women I’d known in my short life had wanted only one thing from me. Some enjoyed it, some didn’t, but they all wanted a gladiator, or the coin for pleasuring one. Others, like Floriana, wanted not only the money for me employing Lucia’s services, but for the status of having such a famous gladiator prefer her house.
If I touched Cassia, she might fall to the floor in a swoon. Or perhaps die altogether.
Cassia belonged to the sort of people removed from the rest of us, who knew about words, and writing, and the mysteries inside books. This was not a woman trained to sate the primal needs of a fighting man, and I understood that.
“There is room for another bed there.” I pointed at the wall near the door, which would be shielded from the window by the table. “We will find one tomorrow. We’ll just have to be cold tonight.”
“I brought blankets,” Cassia said in a faint voice, motioning to a pile in the shadows.
Of course she had. I would need to find work quickly so we could pay for all this.
“I don’t need you in my bed,” I said bluntly, trying to put her at ease. “I have Lucia.”
Her brows quirked. “Lucia?”
“She is one of Floriana’s women.” I rose, glancing around for my sandals which I found placed neatly by the front door. “I will go to her. You can sleep on my pallet and use the blankets.”
Now Cassia stared at me in shock. She’d probably slept on the floor her entire life, even if scribes in large houses enjoyed slightly better accommodations than other slaves.
Before she could object, argue, explain, or ask more questions, I stepped into my sandals and left.
Floriana was still expecting me to pay her. I would have Cassia make a note of it.
Floriana did not want to let me in. She was more interested in coin than in talk of a benefactor, but Lucia came to my aid, and at last, after some heated argument between the two of them, Floriana admitted me.
Lucia was not beautiful, but she had a sturdiness about her, a ready laugh, and skill at putting me at ease. I never spoke much with her—no pouring out the secrets of my life and my world. Most of the time, I didn’t want to talk about my days at all, which were either tedious or deadly. I preferred to listen to Lucia’s funny stories about men who came to Floriana’s, and the women who did as well, in heavy disguise. Couldn’t let it get about that a senator’s wife had a favorite at Floriana’s in the Subura.
I had new topics for conversation tonight—my new-won freedom, Cassia—but I said little beyond the bare facts. Lucia tried to pry out of me who my benefactor was, but as I didn’t know, I couldn’t enlighten her. I assumed Floriana had told her to find out that information. Lucia cared little about such things.
I was too tired to do much of anything with Lucia except enjoy sleeping in her warmth. I felt her try to wake me up a time or two as I drowsed, before she gave up.
I slept.
In my dreams I pictured Cassia, curled up alone on my pallet, snuggled into the blankets she’d procured. She was vulnerable in the apartment by herself. The door at the bottom of the stairs had a bolt, yes, but any good thief could force it.
I should not have left her there alone. In my dreams I saw a thief armed with a cudgel bursting into our rooms, delighted to find Cassia ready for his taking. Cassia jerked out of sleep, screaming my name, as the man advanced on her.
I started up in alarm to find myself still in Lucia’s bed, in daylight. Sunshine poured through the same crack in the wall, and I rolled over, sore and irritated.
Lucia was once more gone. I reached for my tunic and pulled it on, deciding I’d visit a bathhouse. The public baths were the cheapest but a long walk from Floriana’s. The nearby, smaller baths charged fees I could not pay today. I’d always strode in to any bathhouse I liked, but now Aemil wouldn’t send a slave hurrying behind me to pay. I might persuade them to let me in so they could say I favored them, but I wasn’t certain of my welcome. I was primus palus no longer.
Voices came to me, agitated and rushed, as I tied on my sandals. It was not unusual for Floriana to have trouble with a disgruntled customer or a vigile who tried to procure services in exchange for keeping their building safe from fire.
I’d thrown more than one belligerent man out of Floriana’s house. Some seemed to think that Floriana’s ladies could be treated like unwanted curs. One look at me lumbering at them taught these gentlemen to flee.
I stepped out of Lucia’s cubicle to find her hurrying toward me, face strained. Black tears from the cosmetics she adorned herself with trickled down her cheeks, and the red ochre on her lips stained the corners of her mouth.
“Leonidas, thank the gods. It’s Floriana. She’s powerfully ill.”
Floriana, though reedy, was the most robust of women. However, anyone could eat tainted food and have a bad night, even die from it, and fevers could take one suddenly.
Lucia grabbed my hand and dragged me deeper into the house. The women, groggy and hungover, huddled outside the room at the far end of the corridor, their worry filling me with disquiet.
When Lucia flung back the curtain that hid Floriana’s sleeping chamber, I recoiled from the stench that flowed out. I had to swallow bile before I could peer inside.
Floriana’s cell contained a small square window set high on the wall. The shutter was closed, and I reached above her bed to pull it open.
The window looked out to the back of the building behind this one, but enough morning sunlight trickled in to reveal Floriana lying on her pallet, her knees drawn to her chest. A black, many-curled wig perched on a peg above her bed, and Floriana’s own hair, gray and thin, straggled across her scalp.
She wheezed feebly, her mouth working as she tried to gulp air. Her lips were purple, with a touch of foam in their corners.
I straightened abruptly, nearly ramming into the women who crowded behind me.
“She’s been poisoned,” I snapped. “Lucia, stay with her. Keep her warm and try to get her to
vomit.”
I turned on my heel and pushed my way through the ladies, who scattered from me like a flock of birds.
“Where are you going?” Lucia demanded.
“To fetch a medic.”
I knew only one who could save Floriana’s life. I plunged out into the bright Roman daylight, marching resolutely for the Tiber.
Chapter 4
It was not easy to navigate the thronged streets between the Subura and the bridges that crossed the river. Not only did I have to push through the crowd, but as often happened when I walked through Rome, I drew a band of followers. All recognized a gladiator, and most recognized me in particular.
I might now be, by law, just another nobody, but I was still Leonidas, the man thousands of people had cheered for until their throats were hoarse. I’d been their champion.
Now they followed me, calling my name, asking me to scratch my letters onto their souvenirs—cups, pictures, an oil lamp with a crude statue of a fighting gladiator on it.
I evaded them as best I could, but even my snarls to get out of my way were received with delight. They wanted me to be the ferocious fighter they saw in the games.
I didn’t have time for the attention today. Floriana was dying, and the only man who could save her would be at the ludus, patching up the gladiators who’d survived the Saturnalian games.
I avoided the imperial fora and the crowds there, skirted the Theatre of Marcellus, and crossed the Campus Flaminius to the Tiber. I headed north to the Pons Agrippae, taking it over the river to the Transtiberium and so to Aemil’s ludus.
The ludus consisted of a large rectangular open area for training, surrounded on four sides by a two-floored building that housed the gladiators, trainers, slaves, and equipment.
Did I feel a throb of fondness when I looked upon the gate, a wistfulness that I would not be exercising, dining, and bedding down with my fellow gladiators?
I had no idea what I felt, and I was not a man to examine his emotions. At the moment, I was too worried about Floriana to be nostalgic.
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