Chapter 15
Cassia and I studied each other, I in bewilderment, she in defiance.
“He will give us no choice,” I said.
Though I was now a libertus, I was still not free to do as I pleased, Cassia even less so. We were indebted to a benefactor and subject to the whims of an increasingly unpredictable princeps.
“The terms of our contract are clear.” Cassia’s voice held determination.
“I at last persuaded Hesiodos to let me read it. You are to maintain yourself the best you can in this apartment until our benefactor has need of your services. A servant—me—will be provided to help look after your day-to-day life and assist you as you require. The contract will terminate when the benefactor has decided there is no more need for you, or in ten years, whichever comes first.”
“Ten years?” I hadn’t heard this before.
“Hesiodos himself insisted on that clause. Otherwise, he said, we could argue in court that the contract keeps you more or less enslaved, as you are paid no salary and have to come up with our rent, when you are legally a freedman.”
I could imagine Hesiodos, with his dry practicality, encouraging the benefactor’s man of business to put in the stipulation. Not to be kind, I was certain, but to make the contract more difficult to fight.
I’d noted that Hesiodos had disappeared well before Nero had started taking out his anger on me and hadn’t reappeared when we departed. As Aemil would put it, Hesiodos was a man who’d make sure his arse wasn’t the one left flapping in the breeze.
“What about you?” I asked. “In ten years, when we are finished with this contract, will you be freed as well?”
Cassia shook her head. “There is no provision for a change in my status. However, at the end of ten years, I plan to have enough money set aside to buy my own freedom. I will make certain it is recorded in the courts so there is no doubt. I know the price of a scribe and how much I will need to put by.”
My self-pity fled as she calmly outlined her strategy.
It abruptly became clear why she kept such careful accounts, cajoled me into finding employment, and used every way possible to save on day-to-day items, like the bread she’d finagled the baker into providing us for no charge.
It explained why she hid money in niches in the floor, and why she’d sent me out to the banker in the Forum for whatever scheme she had in mind.
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” I asked.
“I only found out what the contract said very recently. It took me some time to persuade Hesiodos to show it to me. I’ve had the idea that I could save to purchase my freedom ever since Hesiodos took me from the market, but now I have a timeline.”
The fact that she had eight and a half more years to prepare seemed to cheer her. To me, the time stretched longer than I could fathom.
“I never knew about this contract,” I said in some irritation. “How can it bind me if I never saw or signed it?”
“You signed it, so to speak, when you accepted the rudis. I find that insidious, but unfortunately, the way the contract is written, it is perfectly legal. Hesiodos knows the law very well, and when I asked another advocate for his opinion, he agreed the contract was correct.”
“The princeps is above the law,” I said. “If you are saying he can’t break the contract and take you away, you are wrong. He can do whatever he likes.”
“Not entirely.” Cassia gave me a smug smile. “When the princeps tries to go too far, the senate can still draw him back—it has happened more than once, and he is always anxious to have public opinion in his favor. Hence, he busies himself with music, racing, and planning his endless house.”
I was not as sanguine. Nero had manipulated and murdered to gain and retain his power, and he’d likely keep on doing so. If the benefactor, Hesiodos, or I tried to stop him taking Cassia, we probably wouldn’t live long enough to hinder him.
“I was going to purchase you,” I found myself saying.
“Pardon?” Cassia, who’d returned to writing, abruptly lifted her head, a pucker creasing her brow. “Purchase me? Why?”
My face warmed. “I asked Hesiodos if I could. So that you wouldn’t have to answer to this benefactor and do as you wish.”
I thought she’d soften into another smile or say she was pleased I’d thought of it, but she remained confused.
“Are you certain? Scribes are very costly. We have special skills that make us quite expensive.”
“When Hesiodos purchased you, you were not being sold as a scribe,” I reminded her.
“That is true.” Cassia quieted. “My mistress sent me out as nothing more than a body servant. Likely why Hesiodos took me. I was cheap, and he thought I’d sweep floors and polish your fingernails.”
I did not laugh. “Hesiodos told me the benefactor would not part with you and to give up the idea.”
Cassia laid her stylus carefully across the wooden frame of her tablet. “Well, I suppose we must wait the rest of the ten years, then. But you won’t need to come up with the money. I have been putting my share by—legitimately, of course, without taking what is rightfully yours.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I did not care. She could have all the gods-cursed money. I needed only meals to eat and a place to sleep every night.
“I planned to take you to the Basilica Julia and free you,” I said. “So that you’d no longer have to be encumbered with me.”
“Oh.” Cassia’s lips parted. She stared at me for some time before she drew a quick breath. “Then, we have come around to the beginning. If you freed me, you’d want me to go, and as I said, I live here now, and I am not leaving.”
“No, I would not want you to go.” My voice rose to a near shout.
We exchanged another long, silent gaze, my chest constricting.
Cassia at last gave me a nod and lifted her stylus in shaking fingers. “Then nothing has changed, and we no longer need to argue.”
I wasn’t aware we’d been arguing. I wanted her to stay, and she wanted to stay, no disagreement. But I wanted her to stay because she wished it, not because she was obligated.
I heaved a sigh and gave up trying to explain.
“I will borrow more scrolls from Marcianus,” Cassia said, as though we hadn’t been discussing our lives and our future.
“To help me research the poisons Samorix told us about and decide which was most likely used. Marcianus might be able to remember if he noted anything odd about Xerxes if I press him. Discoloration of lips or skin, that sort of thing.”
“Does it matter?” I resumed my pacing. “Xerxes is gone. Nothing will bring him back.”
Cassia looked up in surprise. “Do you not want to know what truly happened to him?”
I shrugged, despondent. “Maybe it is best to let him rest.”
Continuing to recall that day would only bring me sorrow and make me relive my grief, which had gutted me.
“What about the person who’s had the audacity to impersonate him?” Cassia asked. “Don’t you want to find them?”
“Yes.” I swung toward her, my fists balling. I could take my anger out on whoever had used Xerxes’s name to make themselves rich. “Let us find him and explain why he should have left it alone.”
“Discovering exactly what poison was used will help me determine when it was most likely administered,” Cassia said.
“That will, in turn, tell me who had the best opportunity to give it to Xerxes. If the person who dosed him was hired, knowing who he or she was can lead us to the mastermind of this endeavor.”
Cassia liked to work backward through a problem all the way to its beginning and could see the past as clearly as what was in front of her now. I was better at putting people against a wall and demanding information.
“I’m going back to the silk warehouses,” I said. “Someone there must know more than they are telling us. And I will question Arsakes—if I can lay hands on him—about his contact with the false Xerxes and find out how they communicated.”
“That would be helpful,” Cassia said with approval. “Will you also take the money I promised the banker? He will know what it is for.”
“You are giving him money?”
I stared at her in astonishment. Cassia was very careful with our funds, and her explanation that she was saving for her freedom made her confidence in the banker all the more surprising.
“Not giving it to him.” Cassia moved to my bunk and pried up a stone near it. She removed a bag, opening it to count the silver coins inside. “Investing it.”
She replaced the stone and handed me the bag.
I usually didn’t look into the pouches she gave me, having learned I’d have just enough to purchase whatever I needed that day. I was amazed she’d let me hand Samorix four sestertii, but she likely considered the information on the poisons plus a scroll worth that price.
The coins in this pouch were many more than she’d given Samorix. The bag held almost an aureus-worth.
“You want me to give this to the banker?” My amazement increased.
“It is what I promised him. Never worry, Leonidas. I have thought this over carefully and spoken to many about Fabius and his trustworthiness. We will receive the money back, with at least twenty percent more on top of it.”
I’d met men who’d invested in schemes like shipping, or in caravans moving across the eastern deserts, or speculations on grain harvests in Egypt.
Mostly I met them in popinae, weeping over their cup because all their funds had disappeared.
They’d had to sell everything they owned and came to the popina to drown their sorrows in cheap wine.
“Better to throw the coins onto the street,” I said. “Half of the ships that put out from Ostia sink or never return.”
Cassia sent me her patient look. “I am not investing in a ship. Shipping has only a small chance of any return at all, and those odds are too long for me. Nor am I giving it to some untrustworthy fellow who promises to double my funds—any man who promises that is lying. I have consulted with Sextus Livius and his man of business and found out all I could about the bankers in Rome. Fabius has the best reputation as a man of honor—as much honor as a banker can have.” She pressed my hand.
“I am not making this decision lightly. As I mentioned, I have eight and a half more years to ensure we both live well once our contract has ended. This is but one part of that plan.”
I eyed the small bag with skepticism. I knew only that I’d hand this to Fabius and never see the coins again.
Cassia never did anything on a whim, I well knew. I’d wager she’d spent the last year and a half researching how best to invest the very money I held now.
“I’ll give it to him,” I said in resignation. “I only hope we can eat while we are waiting for him to pay us back.”
“I’d never let go of what we couldn’t afford to,” Cassia assured me.
“Once you’ve seen Fabius, would you visit Gallus?
Tell him that Sextus Livius is looking to erect a new building on the Aventine, and Gallus ought to offer himself as the architectus.
” Cassia gave my hand another pat and returned to the table.
“Besides, speaking with Gallus always puts you into a better temper.”
Being whipped by Nero had put me into a bad one. I thought I’d feel better only if I had Nero’s neck locked under my arm, my sword at his throat. If he wanted to play at being a gladiator, I’d happily demonstrate what the games were truly like.
I made myself push the thought out of my head. Nero’s spies could scent a man even thinking about assassination, and I’d rather ease my mood with a good meal and glass of wine with Cassia.
“I’ll see Gallus,” I promised.
I slid a clean tunic over my head, wincing as it touched the wounds on my back. However, the salve was already working, taking the pain down to half of what it had been.
I left the apartment, locking both the door at the top of the stairs and the outer door carefully behind me.
“Shout for the cohorts if anyone tries to get inside,” I told the wine merchant.
He frowned at me, still annoyed about the amphora I’d broken, though Lucius had already paid him for it. I knew he’d watch, though, for Cassia’s sake.
Fabius the banker was speaking to two customers when I approached his bench at the Basilica Julia. I idled in the shadow of a column, watching the banker placate the two, one with a hooked nose, the other smaller with a flat face.
Ideas moved through my head as they negotiated, merging with all that had happened to me and Cassia in the past few days.
The two men finished, giving Fabius a curt nod. Fabius dropped the coins they had handed over into the box at his feet, his former gladiator guard watching the crowd as he did so.
“Ah, Leonidas,” Fabius greeted me. “You have something for me?”
Without a word, I took the bag of coins Cassia had given me and passed them to Fabius, trying not to look reluctant.
Fabius took up a stubby piece of baked clay, scratched letters onto it with a sharp stylus, and handed the bit of clay to me. I wasn’t certain what it was, but I slid it into the pouch on my belt.
Finished, Fabius glanced past me to see if any other clients waited.
“Do you do business with silk merchants?” I asked him abruptly. “If a man in Rome wanted to buy a shipment of silk, or fund a shipment, how would he do it? Especially if he were a gladiator?”