Chapter 4 #3
Cassia had formed friendships with servants all around Rome, who kept her informed about various people and events.
Some of these acquaintances she’d known since girlhood, when she and her father had worked for a patrician family in Campania.
Others she’d met since she’d moved in with me.
Cassia’s connections among the freedmen and freedwomen and slaves of Rome were vast.
I did not have to question Cassia’s statement about Tatius, but I did wonder how I, a former gladiator, obviously without much money, was to approach a silk merchant.
“Tell him you are making inquiries for someone else,” Cassia said at my hesitation. “Someone wealthy. Tatius will be more forthcoming if he believes you are working for a prominent man, and engage you in conversation.”
Her words did not inspire me. Whenever I purchased things, I pointed at what I needed and handed over the coins. I rarely had a long conversation with the seller about it.
I drew in a breath and started for the entrance, doing my best to look like a servant ready to shop for a wealthy patron.
The guard stopped me. He was not as tall as I was, but hard-faced and dead-eyed.
I matched his gaze, studying the nose someone had broken for him.
I was certain he’d never been a gladiator—he did not have the inflated confidence of a man who’d had to survive in the arena.
He likely was a legionnaire, used to staring across battlefields at enemies who’d be no match for Roman-trained soldiers.
Cassia, who’d pulled a fold of her cloak across her face, came to me. “We must go in,” she said in an exaggeratedly worried tone. “We will be beaten if we do not bring back what he needs.”
The guard flicked a gaze at her, regarding us both with scorn, before he stepped aside to let us pass.
I didn’t thank him, and led Cassia up the steps and into the foyer.
We entered a marble-tiled atrium, studded with marble columns that supported the vaulted roof. Skylights illuminated the marble-floored interior, which consisted of a square, empty space with benches placed against the walls and open doorways that led to various rooms in the building.
A wiry man hurried out from one of these, his cheek twitching in disappointment when he saw only a gladiator and a female slave.
“I want to speak to Cassius Tatius,” I announced.
“He is busy,” the wiry man said. He too had been a fighting man of some kind in his younger days, I could tell, possibly a legionnaire or urban cohort. “Tell me what you want and go.”
Cassia had faded behind me, never presuming to speak without permission. I was not as good at acting as Cassia, but I hit upon a name that might change the man’s mind.
“I am on an errand for Sextus Livius,” I said, trying to sound pompous. “I can only ask Cassius Tatius.”
I sent a silent prayer to any god listening that Livius would forgive me for the deception.
Sextus Livius was one of the wealthiest men in Rome—possibly the wealthiest—and he considered me a friend for the favor I’d done his father.
I wasn’t certain how far the friendship went, beyond him sending us good wine, and I’d apologize to him as soon as I could.
As expected, the wiry man abruptly became much more respectful, the tic in his left cheek fading. “Livius sent you? We did not know. Please, come this way.”
Cassia drifted to one of the benches and stood beside it, as though she’d wait dutifully for me to finish, but I gestured her to follow us.
“I need her,” I told the man, who stopped in surprise when she obeyed. “She will note down the transaction.”
His wrinkled brow smoothed. “Ah, a scribe. Yes, yes. Come, come.”
I followed him through an arch to a cluttered room that was the complete opposite of the sparse atrium. Small boxes that likely held parchment records were stacked floor-to-ceiling on one wall, and plenty of wax tablets in their cases had been piled on tables and in corners.
A very thin man reposed on a couch behind a long table that was equally covered with scrolls and tablets.
Gold leaf shimmered on the couch’s frame, its legs carved into the claws of a fantastic beast. Cushions of lush silk were strewn across the sofa, the merchant using the sumptuous cloth even to pillow his backside.
I expected a silk merchant to be corpulent, able to feast on the rich foods his profits brought him. Instead, this man was austere, his tunic plain, the white toga draped over one arm of the couch made of ordinary wool.
Tatius’s face was long, his nose too large for it. He had dark eyes that peered up at me in both irritation and suspicion.
“Sextus Livius?” he demanded. “He has his own merchants to import cloth for him. What does he want of me?”
I hesitated, but Cassia could not help me. She remained near the doorway, mute.
“He is interested in a silk merchant called Julius Herminius,” I ventured.
Tatius’s expression changed from mildly annoyed to outraged in an instant. “Herminius? Do not speak of that toad to me. What does Sextus Livius want him for? If Livius thinks to deal with him, he should flee in the other direction, immediately.”