Chapter 10
The majordomo, a small, thin man called Menekrates, lowered his arms and eyed me in disdain. “The master is dining,” he said coldly. “He bade me send you in to join the meal if you arrived in time.”
Menekrates’s expression told me he’d have sent me right back outside if it had been up to him. He didn’t bother to answer me about Cassia.
“Then take me to Livius,” I commanded.
Menekrates turned away in obvious annoyance but gestured for me to follow.
We walked through the vast, quiet house, passing a large triclinium which would host formal supper parties.
Wall paintings in that room portrayed a lush garden from a climate hotter than the one we lived in, and the mosaic-tiled floor depicted fallen baskets of fruit, spent bones, and dogs ready to clean up the mess.
Menekrates continued to a smaller room in the very back of the house, whose wall painting showed a garden that looked more like the one outside Livius’s domus.
Livius rose from a folding chair placed behind a square table. “Leonidas, welcome. Menekrates, have more food brought for my guest.”
Menekrates bowed stiffly and vanished from the room.
Livius himself pulled another folding chair from the wall. It held a deep cushion, offering comfort.
“I am looking for Cassia,” I said. I seated myself gingerly on the chair, not liking so much softness.
“She is dining,” Livius assured me.
He went silent as another servant, one of the burly men who usually attended him, carried in a tray full of bowls and plates. The man set the repast on the table then laid a clean plate, a spoon, and a knife in front of me before trudging out again.
I’d forgotten my hunger in my anger and grief, but the food began to tempt me.
There was a bean salad with fragrant vinegar dressing and various pieces of roasted fish already cut up that I could spear from its dish with my knife.
Flatbread spread with spiced, mashed chickpeas also awaited, as well as fresh greens with early berries scattered through them.
Soon all offerings were on my plate, and I was chewing through them, washing the meal down with Livius’s best wine.
“I’ve never enjoyed anything beyond simple fare,” Livius said as we partook. “If you have a good chef, the simple becomes far more satisfying than complicated dishes meant to impress your clients.”
I agreed that this food was some of the best I’d eaten. The servant returned not long later with a bowl of basinyas—fried balls of dough drizzled with honey.
“Everything was tasty,” I said to Livius. “Thank you.” I licked honey from my finger, surprised that a satisfying meal could turn my thoughts from the dire place they’d been.
“I wished to invite Cassia to dine with me, but Menekrates was horrified, and informed me it was not done.” Livius chuckled. “I’ve been told repeatedly that I need a majordomo, so I hired one, but I’m finding it’s more like having a nanny.”
I did not answer, and Livius continued.
“I’m not certain why it matters whether Cassia eats with me or not,” he said. “We were all born slaves here, even Menekrates. He’s a freedman now, as are all who work in my house. But I believe that most majordomos, whether freeborn or enslaved, are snobs.”
I thought of Nero’s majordomo and others I’d met and agreed.
“I was not,” I said.
Livius had lifted his delicate glass of wine to his lips, and now he paused. “Pardon?”
“I was not slave born,” I said. “I was a free citizen of Rome. I went to the games as punishment for killing my master.”
Livius’s brows climbed. “I have not heard this story. Did you kill him?”
“No.” I popped a crunchy ball of dough into my mouth and savored its sweetness. “But he died. He was crushed by a building he was working on, and I was blamed.”
Livius set down his glass. “It sounds more like a tragic accident to me. Why were you accused?”
I shrugged. “They could not understand how the wall, which had been solid the day before, could have collapsed, and I was nearby. The magistrate needed someone to punish for the incident, and he chose me.”
“I see.” Livius regarded me with new curiosity. “What do you think happened?”
“I never knew. He was a good architectus, and what he’d been building was sound. Maybe a rival rigged it to fall? They might have meant for the builder to be there, to eliminate him, or it might have been misfortune.”
“Well.” Livius let out a breath. “Perhaps it is something you and Cassia should find out. To clear your name entirely.”
“I took my punishment and survived.” I still had difficulty looking back to the time before I’d been a gladiator.
“Yes, but you were labeled a criminal,” Livius pointed out. “Unfairly. If you clear yourself, you can become a trusted citizen again, maybe even earn compensation.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Livius lifted his hands, conceding the argument. “In any case, you are here now, with friends who are grateful to you. I know you are worried about Cassia, but she is well. My servants like her and look after her.”
“And I am grateful to you,” I said. “But I do need to speak to her.”
“Indeed.” Livius drained his glass, rang a small bronze bell on the table beside him, and rose when the burly servant returned. “Have wine brought to the garden, and also Cassia. Leonidas would like to see her.”
Cassia lugged a small stack of tablets with her into the peristyle garden. Livius had the servants place a table and several chairs near the pattering marble fountain, which cooled the air wafting among the trimmed, potted trees. Spring flowers dotted the garden, sending their fragrance to us.
Cassia perched neatly on the chair, her sandaled feet in a perfect line. She opened one tablet, leaving the others in a pile stacked beside her, poised to take down whatever I said.
I hadn’t intended to report everything in front of Livius, but he sipped wine and waited for me to speak.
I began with my encounter with the two Parthians at the silk merchants’ offices.
I revealed that they’d actually been hunting for Xerxes and that I now realized that someone had been impersonating him.
Cassia regarded me sharply when I said this, but she bent her head again to write and did not mention Lucius.
I finished by stating that I’d vowed to find out who’d been pretending to be Xerxes, both because I wanted Arsakes to leave us be and because I wanted a word with that person myself.
I kept silent about my visit to the ludus and my preoccupation with Xerxes’s death, for now. I’d tell Cassia about that when we were alone.
“I am acquainted with silk merchants such as Cassius Tatius,” Livius observed. “They mostly collect themselves in and near the Horrea Agrippina, it is true.”
He leaned back in his chair and stretched out legs half bared by his knee-length tunic. His sandals were of well-tooled leather, and his gold wristbands flashed in the moonlight. His tunic wasn’t silk, but finest linen that draped like silk itself.
“Do any call themselves Xerxes?” Cassia asked him.
“None that I know of. I trade with many merchants of all commodities, up and down the spine of this land and out to the Greek isles and into the mainland—Smyrna and Halicarnassus. Sometimes farther afield—I have agents in Antioch and Tyre. The silk trade is extremely lucrative, and I am not surprised people kill each other over it.”
“You’ve never dealt in silk yourself?” Cassia asked him.
“Not I, my friends. I trade in safer commodities, like pepper and Egyptian marble.” Livius grinned as though he’d made a joke.
“If you hear of a silk trader somewhere who calls himself Xerxes, will you send word?” I asked.
“Of course,” Livius answered at once. “Merchants spend their days devising ways to take my fortune away from me. I would enjoy thwarting a crooked one.”
I thanked him and then went silent, refreshing myself with his good wine. Relating my tale had dried my throat.
Livius declared we could do no more about the problem tonight and turned the conversation to building. He owned a number of properties throughout the city and on the coast at Ostia, mostly commercial buildings in which he rented out space.
His was the warehouse that I’d assisted Gallus to construct.
After a wary start, I’d thrown myself into the work and started to enjoy it.
Livius bringing up my former master’s death tonight showed I could still be unnerved by it, but thanks to Gallus, I’d managed to separate my past from my present.
Gallus was now working on another construction near the Porticus Liviae that would house shops and eating places. He would call me in when it was time for me to assist him.
When the conversation wound down, Livius insisted we spend the night. It was too late to walk back to the Quirinal through the dangerous streets and there was no guarantee Arsakes would leave Cassia and me alone.
Livius bade Menekrates show me to a cubiculum on the upper floor, a rare privilege for a visitor. I worried about Cassia bunking in the servants’ quarters, but Menekrates assured me—with disapproval—that she would be treated as an honored guest.
The sleeping chamber to which Menekrates took me was the most lavish I’d ever been given.
I’d spent nights in domii on Rome’s hills before, a guest of matrons who enjoyed the titillation of being with a gladiator, but I never slept in their chambers.
I’d always been shown to the servants’ area or sent to sleep on the floor in a storeroom or back hallway.
This cubiculum had a wide bunk strewn with cushions and colorful bed coverings, a wall painting depicting a view of the bay near Baiae—from the correct perspective of a room on a second floor—and columns of the Egyptian marble Livius had mentioned.
It was a chamber Nero himself wouldn’t have sneered at. A servant in a tunic only slightly less sumptuous than Livius’s told me he’d tend to my needs.
I couldn’t think of any needs, so I requested that he made certain Cassia was well taken care of.
The servant gazed at me with an unmoving expression. “I attend only those on the upper floors,” he informed me. “Those on the lower floors will do their jobs as required.”
Thus rebuking me, he left a lit oil lamp on a low table and departed on silent feet.
I thought I’d lie awake, too unused to the cushions surrounding my body, but I’d walked all day, fought with Arsakes and his fellows, had done the demonstration bout with Regulus, and had drunk plenty of wine.
I sank into slumber, to dream of Xerxes.
I, not Perseus, fought him on his last day, under the pulsing roar of the crowd in the arena. My heart hammered as I faced him, sweat streaking down my face under my helmet.
Xerxes pushed his own plumed helmet back and grinned at me. “I can take care of myself, Leonidas.”
“What happened to you?” I shouted at him. “What distracted you? Why did you not guard yourself in the end?”
My words came out muffled and jumbled, barely speech at all. Xerxes fixed me with his characteristic amused stare.
“Find out, if you can. People have lives when you’re not looking, you know.”
“Just tell me,” I commanded in desperation. “Did someone kill you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about Lucius. He’s a fool, and an overconfident one. Don’t trust anything he says.”
With that, Xerxes slammed his helmet down over his face and took up a fighting stance, sword ready.
Not a real sword, a wooden rudis. The one in my hand was bronze.
I wouldn’t kill him. Aemil had reconsidered and put me in instead of Perseus to delight the crowd. Xerxes and I would mock fight, maybe nick each other for a show of blood, then go home to celebrate Saturnalia.
Xerxes came at me, battering me relentlessly with his wooden sword. I countered with my shield, trying desperately not to stab him with the metal blade. The crowd jeered and hissed, calling me a coward.
Xerxes rushed me, his helmet gone now. I swerved to avoid him, but my feet were sunk in the arena’s sand, and I couldn’t move.
My arm stuck stiffly out, and Xerxes ran straight into my blade.