I’d also thought Lucia and I were friends, as far as such a friendship could be. But in truth, I realized Lucia had no reason to be loyal to me, no matter what I wanted from her. A woman hadn’t held me under in the bath, a man had, but men could be hired, or manipulated.
Cassia offered no more explanations. I moved to the balcony again and peered down at the street, then went back into the apartment and closed the wooden shutters.
In the gloom, I crossed to the front door and left without a word. Cassia didn’t try to follow—this time I would have sent her back, and she seemed to understand this.
At the bottom of the stairs, I eased open the door and scanned the dark street. The wine merchant’s was shut now, only a tiny flicker of light behind the wooden slats that closed off the shop showing someone was awake.
I slipped outside and moved down the lane. At this hour, few people were about. Most would be inside, doors bolted, dining and sleeping, huddled with their families.
Footsteps sounded on the cross street. I walked to it quietly, not hurrying, my boots making almost no noise. I reached the main street and took a quick glance around the corner. No one.
In no rush, I waited. Anyone following me would wait also, to see what I would do.
It could be a while. I folded my arms against the cold and remained in the side street, out of the wind.
A clump of men passed. The few in togas were surrounded by lackeys with lanterns, trying to light the way through inky blackness.
A darker shape detached itself from a doorway a little down the street and followed them.
A robber hoping for a good take? Or a man seeking the safety of the group? Or Lucia, trying to escape me? The cloaked figure was slender enough to be her.
I stepped out and quickened my pace. The men’s guards heard me and turned, lanterns high. Their pursuer sought a doorway, hiding. I went right after her.
The men and their lantern bearers hurried on, voices hushed in fear.
I laid my hands on the follower and yanked her out of hiding. I realized in an instant that it wasn’t Lucia, though the man’s build was as slim as a woman’s.
I stared down at my vigile, his face pale in the darkness. He struggled, but I held him firmly and took his knife away from him as soon as he pulled it. He found its point at his own throat.
“Why are you following me?” I demanded.
His dark eyes were bulbous. “You are following me. You chased me a long time this morning.”
“Because I wanted to ask you a question. Why are you in this part of Rome?”
“I’m doing my job—what did you think? I’m supposed to patrol the streets at night. Searching for fires or disturbances.”
“You were spying on me and trying to sneak away with the group of patricians. I ask again, why?”
“Because you probably killed that woman.” The vigile tried to draw himself up, but with me crushing his ribs and holding a knife to his throat, he failed. “I only have to prove it to the magistrates.”
“The last time I was accused of murder, no one went to the trouble of making sure they could prove it before dragging me to prison.”
The vigile’s eyes took on new fear. “They say it’s hard to touch you, since you’re so protected.”
“Protected by who?” I asked before I could stop the words.
His brows rose in confusion. “Don’t you know?”
No, I didn’t. I had no idea who my benefactor was, which was maddening. I shook him again. “Who is accusing me?”
“How should I know? I do what my watch master tells me. Find out if Leonidas killed Floriana and bring proof, he says.”
He was lying. I’d lived with men who lied about every detail in their pasts until I could siphon truth from a good story. His watch master had given him no such orders. The vigile was after me himself, or perhaps he was Floriana’s murderer and was trying to cover that fact by using me as a convenient scapegoat.
“I didn’t kill her, and you won’t find proof I did,” I said in a hard voice. “I was traveling out of Rome the morning she was killed, surrounded by witnesses. I had no reason to go to that point of the river so early.”
“Eh?” The vigile shot me a triumphant look. “How do you know where she was killed?”
“I asked. I was chasing you this morning to ask the same question of you.”
His expression told me he was certain I lied. We’d get nowhere while neither of us believed the other.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What is your name?”
“Avitus.” His eyes flickered.
“I doubt you work in this quarter,” I stated. “It would be a large swath to patrol from your watch house near the Esquiline.”
He did not try to deny this. “You were there when Floriana was poisoned. What’s to say you didn’t do that?”
I’d had this same argument with Regulus. “Why should I send for the best physician in Rome if I didn’t want to save her?”
Avitus shrugged. “You might have wanted her to be sick. As a warning.”
“A warning for what?”
“For what she’d get if she crossed you. She didn’t like you coming there, and everyone knew it.”
I gazed at him in amazement. “What are you talking about? I’d been going for years, and Floriana never complained.”
Avitus glared defiantly. “She wanted you out. Floriana hoped that when you were freed and had to pay your own way, you’d cease coming, but you didn’t. Did she threaten you?”
“No.” Floriana had told me I needed to pay, but in her straightforward, businesslike way. “How do you know so much about what Floriana wanted?”
Avitus struggled anew. His face was a pale smudge in the darkness but I saw the flood of outrage in his eyes. “Never you mind!”
“Were you a customer?” I studied him dubiously. “I doubt you could have afforded it.”
He started to thrash so furiously that I nearly cut him by accident. “You are filth. Gladiator. Infamis.” Avitus spit on me.
More surprised than angry I pressed the knife to his throat. He gulped and went still.
I opened my mouth to ask why he’d be stupid enough to throw insults at a man who could kill him in the space of a breath, but the clattering of footsteps behind me stilled my words.
“Avitus!” a man called. A lantern glimmered at the head of the street. “Where in Hades are you?”
I clapped my hand over Avitus’s parted lips before he could reply. He tried to bite me, so I held him harder. At the same time, I turned him around and pushed him from the curb and into the street.
He stepped hard on my foot with his solid boot. I tossed his knife into the street, and he scrambled after it, stumbling and going down on the stones. While he gained his feet, I took to mine.
I was well away, running into the blackness of the nearest lane before Avitus or his fellow vigiles could start after me.
They didn’t follow. I hovered in the darkness, waiting to run or fight, but after a low-voiced conversation, the half dozen of them turned and tramped back the way they’d come. I knew then that Avitus’s watch captain truly hadn’t sent him after me, because the lot of them would have pursued me until they arrested me. Avitus wanted me for his own reasons.
I heard a soft sound in the dark, and I turned abruptly, my knife out.
Behind me, huddled on the stones, was an entire family—man and woman with three children, one a babe in arms. I guessed they’d been turned out of their insula at the beginning of the month, when rents were due, and hadn’t yet found another place to go.
They stared at me in terror, even the babe round-eyed. I was large and hulking, and if I wanted to take all they had, including the wife and the small girl, they knew they couldn’t stop me.
I took a step toward them. The lot of them cowered back, the man trying to put himself in front of his wife and children. I quickly tucked away my knife and opened the pouch of coins I wore tied to my rope belt.
I empt
ied the pouch, setting the coins—about three sestertii’s worth in all—a few feet in front of the man. Without waiting for him to collect them, I turned and marched away.
I heard a soft, “Thank you,” from the woman, and then I rounded the corner and faded into the night.
When I reached the apartment, the door at the foot of the stairs was wrenched open as soon as I reached for the handle. Cassia waited for me, her eyes wide, her stolla askew. This was the first time I’d seen her anything but pristine.
“What happened?” she asked me.
I merely gave her a tired grunt and moved past her and up the stairs. I was shaking when I reached the top. Cassia slipped in behind me and shut and bolted the door as I went straight to my pallet and sat heavily upon it.
“Will you tell me before you sleep?” Cassia asked. “Please?”
As always, slumber rushed at me in response to strain, but I propped myself up and described my encounter with Avitus. Cassia listened, troubled, then gave a decided shake of her head.
“I will have to find out more about Avitus.”
I untied and dropped my belt then pulled my tunic off over my head. “I will. In the morning.”
“No, I will.” Her voice was firm. “You will either frighten him away or be arrested if you threaten him too much. I can find out without anyone noticing. I believe you should discover who purchased Floriana’s building. It is not unusual for speculators to hover about waiting for an occupant or an owner to die to snatch up a property. Perhaps someone did not want to wait—Floriana was a healthy woman from what you tell me, not a sickly crone.”
I heard the words but sleep came at me, and I ceased fighting it. I struggled with the blankets as I lay down.
“I have no more coins,” I mumbled. “Gave them to a family sleeping on the street. I know you’ll want to make a note.”
“Oh.” Her voice went soft, and then I surrendered to oblivion. The last thing I remember was the blankets being straightened around me, and Cassia’s quiet words.
“That was good of you, Leonidas.”
Cassia was cheerful the next morning while I groggily ate bread and drank watered-down wine, my head muzzy from sleep. She’d gone out to fetch water and our breakfast before I’d awakened, though I’d never heard her depart.
“If you wish to learn what goes on in Rome, go to the fountains,” she said as she finished her last bite of bread. “The women who draw water know everything about everyone in the city, from the slums to the villas. They already knew I work for you, and how you were freed, and that you now have a benefactor. The questions they asked were unnerving.”
I imagined the women’s salty language as they prodded Cassia about living with a gladiator. They likely didn’t believe her when she told them we slept in separate beds. Cassia was a comely young woman, but even if I’d wanted to use her as a courtesan, my body had decided recently that it was uninterested in activities of the bed other than sleep.
“They know Avitus,” Cassia continued. “He’s a common sight on the streets of the Subura, especially after dark. He’s not above flirting with any woman as he escorts her home, for her own safety, of course.”
I thought of the terrified young man in my grip last night and could not picture him flirtatious.
“He knew much about Floriana and things she said, or at least he claimed to,” I said. “I wondered if he worked for her as a lad.” Floriana had stocked lovers to please any taste.
“Possibly.” Cassia brushed crumbs into a cloth and folded it. “A boy growing up in a lupinarius might decide to take his vengeance on Floriana. If those in the house knew him, he’d be let in and out without a second thought.”
“But I didn’t see him the night Floriana was poisoned. I’ve never seen him there at all. The first time I set eyes on Avitus was on the street outside the morning I fetched Marcianus.”
“Perhaps you simply didn’t notice him before.”
I shook my head. “I noted every person at Floriana’s each time I went there. I made certain no enemy was within—I couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t try to siphon my blood as I slept.”
Her brows went up. “Siphon your blood?”
“The blood of a gladiator cures many ills. Did you not know this?”
“I have heard such a thing, but it’s absurd.” Cassia carried the cloth to the balcony and shook the crumbs from it. She returned to the table and sat down, folding the fabric with precise creases. “I’ve read every treatise in Greek and Latin I’ve been able to find on disease and medicine, including Hippocrates, and there is no evidence that your blood carries magical healing powers.”
I too had my doubts—if my blood were so magical, why didn’t I heal more quickly? I’d taken a bad blow early in my career that had laid me up for a month. I’d survived only because of Marcianus’s skill.
“In any case, I never saw Avitus before that day,” I stated firmly.
Cassia rummaged in the box beside the table and pulled out her inevitable tablet, opening it and carefully marking the wax with her stylus.
“Why do you do that?” I asked irritably.
Cassia glanced up at me, dark eyes framed with black lashes. “Do what?”
“Write everything.” I waved my hand over the tablet. “Keep your records. What good are they? Did they save you from being sold at the slave market? From having to work for a gladiator and be needled by the women at the fountains?”
Her stylus froze, and her face tensed. “My father taught me to do so. It helps me make sense of the world.”
But her father had died, leaving his daughter alone and unprotected.
“Why were you sold?” I asked abruptly. “You could have carried on your father’s work at your mistress’s villa. Even if they didn’t trust a woman in their scribe’s position, you could have assisted the next one. You are obviously skilled in reading and writing. And organizing,” I added. Our apartment had been orderly from the day we moved in.
Cassia’s color rose. “The mistress decided I should go.”
“Why?” I asked again, but I thought I knew.
I had observed not a few moments ago that Cassia was a comely young woman. When her father had been alive, he’d have protected her, holding a high enough position in the household to have some influence over its master, or at least to earn his respect.
Once her father had gone, Cassia, a slave because she was the daughter of a slave, would have been alone and vulnerable.
“Which was it?” I gentled my voice. “The paterfamilias? Or his son?”
Chapter 16
Cassia kept her head bowed for a long time after my question. When she raised it, her gaze remained on the table.
“The master,” she whispered.
Sudden rage gripped me. I did not need to ask her for the details. The master of the house could have anyone he liked to slake his needs, and his wife could do nothing. As long as a man had affairs with those of a lower station, woman or man, he would not be censured.
I would not ask whether the master had simply made known he wanted her or if he’d acted on it. By the haunted look in Cassia’s eyes, plus the deep fear she’d had of me when I’d first met her, I suspected he’d acted on it.
While a wife could not stop her husband chasing his pleasure, she could at least make certain her rival was out of the house.
“So the mistress sold you,” I finished.
“It happened very fast. She never even spoke to me. The majordomo of our household put me in a cart, and one of the master’s guards drove me to Rome and to the market. I was not even allowed to bring any of my things.” Silent tears welled from her eyes to spill down her cheeks.
I wanted to press her hand in comfort, but did not think my touch would be welcome. I knew what it was to be used, to be fondled and stroked without assent, because I was there for other people’s entertainment. That was why I was infamis, made for nothing but spectacle. I might be hailed as a hero of the games, followed about in admiration, a
nd have drawings of myself on everything imaginable, but in the end, I could be discarded, like a vase with my visage on it, when it was no longer wanted.
I curled my fingers on the table. “You have things now. I won’t take them from you.”
Cassia looked up at me, one wisp of hair straggling from her perfect coif. “If Regulus has you arrested for murdering Floriana, they will be taken. I might be arrested with you, as your accomplice.”
She spoke the truth. Though Cassia had nothing to do with the murder, she might be killed simply because she belonged to me. Even if she was spared, she’d have no one to protect her if I was executed.
I tore another hunk of bread from the round loaf. “Then we had better prove I didn’t do it.”
Cassia wiped her eyes and nodded. She took up her stylus again, making shaky marks in the wax, and we said nothing more about it.
I finished breakfast and went out. I brought a cloak this time, as the January air was cold, coming hard on the heels of the rain. The streets were wet, glistening under the morning sun.
Neither Cassia nor I had heard word from Celnus that Priscus or his son had moved from his house, though I would check on him today. Nero’s adamance unnerved and puzzled both of us.
I left Cassia going over the sketches she’d made of the place Floriana had been killed. I could see nothing in them, but I had already discovered that Cassia’s thoughts worked differently from mine.
Men were tearing apart Floriana’s house when I reached it, hammers bashing holes in walls, flakes of the paintings on the outside falling to the pavement. The painted buttocks of a man drifted away on the wind.
The architectus I’d met here, Gnaeus Gallus, had not come today. The foreman watching the workers, who were stripped to loincloths for the heavy work despite the cold, faced me impatiently as I asked about him.
Gallus had told me his shop was on the Clivus Pullius, and the overseer now told me exactly where.
Blood of a Gladiator Page 14