Chapter 13
Marcianus strolled confidently along a narrow street that made me put Cassia in front of me and behind Marcianus, the most protected position. The Transtiberim could hold grand villas facing the river or the darkest slums, and this was one of the slums.
Shops open to the street offered everything from bright green vegetables to secondhand cloth and tunics to loads of old and used bowls, jugs, and amphorae.
I saw Cassia glance at the pottery with interest, and she stopped altogether at a stall displaying tablets whose wax was gone, leather straps broken.
I nudged her on. “Later.”
“So easy to repair,” she said. “I always need more.”
“Later,” I repeated. “We will return and shop another day.”
Cassia nodded in all seriousness.
I spied the way a hefty man who leaned against a brick wall watched her, as though calculating her price.
Cassia still wore the gold earrings, so he might have been tabulating what he could fetch from those as well.
I’d have to insist on accompanying her back here to browse wares when she saw no reason not to come alone.
“I hope I have the correct street,” Marcianus said ahead of us. “I don’t come here often. Ah, here it is.”
He dove down an ally that stank of urine and feces, rats scurrying out of his way. Cassia lifted the hem of her tunic and stepped delicately, the walls of the place narrowing to brush our shoulders.
“Samorix,” Marcianus called into an open door. A symbol of a snake twined around a staff had been carved into the door’s stone lintel, though time and rain had flaked much of it away.
The shop inside was tiny and dark. An oil lamp burned on a table, behind which sat a man with a thin, leathery face and shaved dark hair.
He was tall and lean, his tunic hanging from bony but hairy arms. Around him were shelves upon shelves of boxes, clay pots and ceramic jars, and stacks of scrolls and tablets.
“Who is that?” The man jerked his head up from whatever scroll he’d been studying. His eyes, which were a light shade of blue, widened as he took me in. He grew curious when he beheld Cassia, then relaxed in recognition when he lit upon Marcianus.
“Ah, it’s the medicus. What extraordinarily difficult potion do you want me to mix for you this time?”
“None at all,” Marcianus reassured him. “I’ve come to ask what sort of elixir could render a man paralyzed but not stiffly so. In a stupor, let us say. And what sort would take only a minute or so to work, and which would take longer?”
Samorix regarded him in incredulity. “Is that all you want to know? That’s a denarius-worth of information.”
Marcianus blenched. “I’m not asking you to make it, only to tell me what would have such an effect.”
“Yes, but that’s time for me to read through my books and maybe test out a few concoctions, which is the use of ingredients and more time. A denarius.”
Marcianus leaned his fists on the one clear spot on the table. “I’ll wager you know exactly what will cause such a thing without reading a word.”
Samorix tapped the side of his head. “Perhaps, you are forgetting all the years of experience and knowledge that you wouldn’t have without me. An as per name of such poisons, but a denarius for my wisdom.”
Marcianus’s lanky arms firmed as he leaned closer to Samorix. “A sestertius.”
Samorix was not impressed. “And if I do not capitulate? You’ll set your pet gladiator upon me?”
“Are any of your scrolls for purchase?” Cassia asked around Marcianus. “I collect every scrap of knowledge I can. We will take information on the concoctions and a scroll of my choice for one denarius.”
Samorix’s narrow face scrunched. “Gods save me from dealing with Greeks.”
“Do you agree?” Marcianus asked. “Cassia loves to read.”
“Only if she doesn’t take a scroll I have great need of.”
“I can copy it out, if so,” Cassia said.
It was her calm tones that won over Samorix, I was certain. “Agreed,” Samorix snarled, then shouted, “Hadrianus!”
A curtain in the corner of the shop moved. I didn’t think there was room in this building for anything beyond the wall behind Samorix’s desk, but I glimpsed shadowy depths when a giant of a man raised the curtain.
He was thick muscled, though not as tall as I was, with feet the size of platters in huge sandals. His tunic stretched over a broad chest and shoulders, and his dark hair was cut short, like mine and Samorix’s.
While Samorix was obviously a Gaul, this man was fully Roman, with dark hair and eyes and a solid build. He gave us a quick, assessing stare, then turned inquiringly to Samorix.
“Fetch the goods from the top shelf—you know the ones,” Samorix instructed. “And bring out the boxes of scrolls that are under the table. All of them.”
The man nodded, gave us another once-over, and left without a word.
“He can’t speak,” Samorix told us once Hadrianus had gone.
“He had his tongue cut out when he was a quarry slave, because he talked too much. So I was told. He must still have made trouble after that because the quarry owner was happy to be rid of him. I had him at a bargain, plus he can’t betray my secrets. ”
The casual way Samorix spoke of the man’s torture chilled me.
I recalled standing with other condemned slaves in a marketplace while Aemil looked us over with his cold, hard gaze.
I’d been one of the lucky ones chosen for the life of a gladiator.
Quarry slaves lived brutal lives, few surviving for long.
“A denarius before he returns,” Samorix said. “And you never asked me for this information.”
Marcianus patted his rope belt in sudden bewilderment, as though realizing no pouch hung from it. “I do not have such sum on me, I am afraid. I can bring it to you when I return for more valerian root.”
Samorix scowled and drew a breath, as though to call Hadrianus back. Cassia glanced quickly at me, and I stepped forward, tugging open my money pouch.
I fumbled inside then laid down four sestertii, one beside the other, the equivalent of a denarius, on Samorix’s table.
Samorix snatched up the coins then studied them closely, checking that I’d not shaved off bits of silver from their edges. He grunted in satisfaction and dropped the coins into a small box on the table, which he then locked.
“It seems you are good for something after all, champion of the games,” Samorix told me. “A walking strongbox.” He swung from us as Hadrianus returned, his arms full. “Don’t drop the vessels. We’d have to burn down the shop.”
Hadrianus appeared in no risk of dropping anything. He competently set the boxes of scrolls on another table, stacking them atop one another. Then he carried eight small, covered clay pots and several minute wooden boxes to Samorix and arranged them carefully in front of him.
Samorix, without thanking Hadrianus, lifted each pot and box in turn, examining the seals affixed to them. He sorted the boxes and pots into two piles, the ones he pushed aside making the largest group.
He set the remaining three pots and box in a row across the table.
“Now, pay attention. This one is cobra venom.” He held up a small clay vessel sealed with black wax.
“In this form, it will stupefy a man without killing him. Will last for several hours, depending on how much he ingests. It’s bitter, so will need to be mixed with a strong wine or spicy food. ”
The next little pot was sealed in red. “This comes from a mollusk. It will render a man dizzy and numb for a time, and eventually, if he’s been given enough of it, he will cease breathing and die.”
Cassia wrote fervently, a soft staccato in the quiet.
“Powder distilled from hemlock,” Samorix continued, resting his hand on the box. “It is much less potent this way than when fresh. It can weaken a man, though he might recover.”
Samorix moved on to the next innocuous-looking pot, this one’s wax a pale yellow.
“From the bulb of the narcissus flower. It’s a beautiful plant.
Rub this on an open wound, and a man will become numb and stagger about.
If he eats it, he’ll vomit and his muscles will stiffen up until he dies.
He will probably recover if he merely has its juice pressed into a wound. ”
Unless, I finished silently, the man was stabbed through the abdomen while reeling from its effects.
“Are these the sorts of things you’re looking for?” Samorix fixed Marcianus with a hard stare. “Two more denarii for the lot.”
“We don’t wish to purchase any,” Marcianus said quickly. “I am more interested in who you sold something like this to, say two and a half years ago.”
Samorix’s brows climbed. “Two and a half years ago? I’m not likely to remember that, am I? And anyway, my client’s names are my business. What’s this all about?”
Cassia spoke before I or Marcianus could. “We are trying to determine if a man was poisoned, three Saturnalias ago.”
“You don’t know if he was or not?” Samorix asked. “Where were you, Marcianus? You like to look over a body and decide what happened to every part of it. Ghoulish, but there we are.”
This was a man who reeled off the terrible things the powders or liquids in his jars could do to a person, and he found Marcianus ghoulish. I noted that Hadrianus, standing out of Samorix’s line of sight, wore an expression of disgust.
“I was a bit pressed at the time,” Marcianus said in remorse. “But the man might have had poison such as this one rubbed into a sword cut.” He let his hand hover over the pot of narcissus, though I noted he did not touch it.
“A sword cut?” Samorix gazed at him in amazement. “You don’t mean someone knifing another in the street, do you? You mean gladiatorial combat.”
“Farfetched, I know,” Marcianus said apologetically. “But it could have happened.”