Chapter 16
Fabius’s obsequious banker’s expression fell away, and he peered at me sharply. “A gladiator?” His gaze twitched toward his bodyguard. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Has it happened?” I asked. “Could a gladiator bring in silk and distribute it?”
“No.” Fabius scowled at me. “The silk business is a closed one. Only a handful of merchants are allowed to trade. Give up the notion.”
I had no intention of explaining what I meant to Fabius, so I sent him a nod and stepped away. Fabius stared after me, frowning, but resumed his professional face as another client approached.
I trod down the basilica’s steps, which were filled with people waiting to speak with whomever they’d come to meet. Others were simply taking a rest from the May heat, and in one corner, two men played a game with a board scratched into the stone stairs.
I hadn’t gone far along the Forum, heading for the Oppian Hill and Gallus’s office, when a heavy tread made me swing around.
Fabius’s gladiator bodyguard loomed behind me. “The popina of the three grapes, in the Argiletum. After the baths.”
Without waiting for my reply, he turned and marched back toward the Basilica Julia.
I stared after him while men brushed past me, before I turned once more for the Oppian. Whatever the guard wanted to tell me, I’d have to discover later.
I walked the Clivus Pullius to the Oppian Hill and reached Gallus’s shop on its lower slope. Gallus was in and greeted me warmly.
“Always a pleasure to see you, my friend.” Gallus was a small man with dark hair just going gray. He beamed at me as though we hadn’t worked side by side for days inside a freezing building in the Subura this winter, in cramped spaces with tempers short.
Gallus had been the first man who’d looked past the gladiator in me and been interested in my experience as a builder. He’d taken a chance and trained me as an assistant while he constructed the warehouse in the Emporium and then the smaller building in the Subura, both owned by Sextus Livius.
“Cassia says you should speak to Livius about a new structure on the Aventine,” I said without preliminary.
Gallus’s bushy brows went up. “On the Aventine? Interesting. Likely he’s pulling down something rickety he’s got his hands on, and it will be tricky work. But lucrative. I will of course need your assistance if I land such a project.”
I nodded my thanks. “I have also met with a man called Marcus Flavinus Mena, who wants to renovate his house on the lower Palatine.”
Gallus’s enthusiasm dimmed. “A patrician, eh? Always difficult to work for. They hover and change their minds a dozen times, waiting until you’ve cut the stone or beam precisely before they want it a tad lower or higher or in a different place altogether.
” He sighed. “Though it couldn’t hurt to speak to him. ”
“I’m not sure he’d pay you much,” I warned. “He seems a bit careless about money.”
“So many in the old families are. Ah, well. Still, having my name associated with a patrician’s, especially if he likes what I do for him, can help bring more commissions.”
I nodded. I’d delivered my messages and could simply go, but I lingered, liking the calming effect of Gallus’s tools on the walls and the clutter of his worktable.
Gallus sensed my uneasiness. “The prospect of a new building project usually cheers you, Leonidas. Is anything wrong? Young Cassia is well, I hope?” He was fond of Cassia.
“She is,” I assured him. I hadn’t meant to tell him anything, but under Gallus’s sympathetic gaze, I found myself sinking to a stool and spilling out the tale to him, beginning with me spying Lucius in the Forum, believing he was Xerxes.
Gallus listened with attentiveness, changing from surprise, to indignation, to deep interest as I went on.
“Hence, why I never have much to do with merchants and trading,” Gallus said when I’d finished. He now sat near me, a cup of wine in his hands—somehow, he’d pressed one into mine as well. “Too dangerous. Buildings and stone never betray you. At least, they won’t if you prepare correctly.”
“I can make no sense of anything,” I said. “How could Xerxes have been a smuggler? Now Cassia thinks someone killed him to take over his business. She’s trying to work out who and how.”
“It is quite a tale,” Gallus said. “Let me see if I have the right of it. Your friend Xerxes, long ago, decided to pay a group of Parthians to send him, out of sight of the excise men, silk to sell in Rome, using his connections to patrician matrons to earn some extra cash. Some unknown person decided to take over this trade, making certain your friend was killed—I am sorry about that, Leonidas, I truly am—and assuming his name, at least with the Parthians. The Parthians have now come to Rome, incensed that this man calling himself Xerxes insists they pay him a large sum of money to keep quiet about their involvement in the affair. They followed you, believing you knew where he was, unaware that the real Xerxes is deceased.”
“Yes,” I said glumly.
“What about the brother?” Gallus asked.
“Lucius?” I spread my hands across my knees. “I don’t know what to make of him.”
“Could this Lucius himself not have taken his brother’s name?
So he could continue selling the silk? Or at least continue receiving money from others for promised delivery?
Forgive me, I’m not certain how merchants work.
I only know it is difficult to get an answer from them whenever my order of marble or tufa is delayed, and delayed again.
They talk about ships going down, when I know the material comes over the road from the mountains. ” Gallus shook his head in disbelief.
“Lucius was surprised by Xerxes’s death,” I said. “Or so he claimed. I can usually tell when a man is lying.”
Lucius was indeed liar, I’d recognized, and Cassia had as well. But not about Xerxes.
“He might not have realized his brother was dead,” Gallus offered. “But perhaps he was the front man for this operation all along, using a famous gladiator’s name as entree to the patrician world. Or he and Xerxes were working it together.”
The last possibility could be the true one. Would Xerxes have colluded with his estranged brother at a distance to sell silk to women who adored him?
Yes, the Xerxes I’d known possibly would, though once he’d met Marcella, his visits to the matrons ceased.
What bothered me most about any solution was that Xerxes had never told me any of this. He hadn’t talked about his brother, nor about the silk trade, nor even who he’d dined with the night or day before his final match.
He’d been with me at the cena libera, the supper given to gladiators the night before the games began, but Xerxes had died in the bouts three days later. He’d been elusive when we weren’t at the Circus Gai, and I didn’t know who he’d seen or what he’d eaten or drunk.
I growled low in my throat, unable to contain my frustration.
Gallus regarded me in sympathy. “Perhaps you and Cassia ought to speak to the brother again.”
“Yes.” I rose, my head nearly brushing the low ceiling.
“I did not mean this instant, dear boy.” Gallus came to his feet to stand beside me, his expression reassuring. “I am certain you and Cassia will clear up the confusion and discover what truly happened to your friend.”
Gallus had shown confidence in me from the day he’d met me, once he’d finished screaming at the sight of a gladiator in the room he’d been measuring. He’d become fascinated that I knew the function of each of his surveying tools and had trusted me ever since.
“I have another appointment,” I extemporized to explain my abruptness. Though I would, tomorrow, return to Marcella’s farm and shake Lucius until he told me the entire truth.
“I see. Well, thank you for pointing me toward the new project on the Aventine. I will visit Sextus Livius in the morning and grovel appropriately. I might even try to gain an appointment with your new friend Mena. Who knows? He might be a reasonable man, for a patrician.” Gallus chuckled.
I acknowledged his humor with a nod, then bade him a good afternoon as cordially as I could and left him.
The baths all over Rome emptied before sundown, which in May came an hour or so later than it had a few months ago.
Dark clouds that had begun forming over the western edge of the city as I’d come up the hill now moved to encircle us.
The sun alternately burst from behind the clouds or disappeared entirely, plunging the streets into and out of gloom as I descended.
I made my way to the Argiletum, which lay between the Subura and the high walls of the Forum Augusti.
Nearby was the Macellum, the vast marketplace where goods from all over the world were sold across stone tables.
One could buy gleaming fresh apricots and bright berries in summer, bolts of cloth—including silk from licensed sellers—grains measured carefully into baskets, and trinkets and novelties from every corner of the known world.
I knew the popina Fabius’s guard had mentioned, having passed it many a time as I trudged through the Argiletum. The wall between the counter and the entrance bore three painted bunches of grapes, colors now faded.
I spied the large bodyguard inside the popina, sitting against the far wall.
Above him, a wall painting, also faded, depicted three men around a table similar to that at which the bodyguard sat.
Someone had scratched words above the men’s heads, as though spelling out their conversation.
I knew enough Latin letters by now to recognize how rude the words were.
Fabius’s guard didn’t rise when I entered. He remained seated on a bench against the wall, his wine cup on the table. He signaled to the proprietor, who hurried to us with another cup for me.
“My fighting name was Memnon,” the man said as I seated myself. “At least, that is the name Aemilianus gave me.”
I blinked in surprise. “Aemil? You mean you fought in his ludus?”
“Years ago. I was one of his first recruits. I am called Vitus now. Memnon is long gone.”
Aemil liked to give his gladiators the names of ancient heroes—Greek, Spartan, Persian, and otherwise. Because of Aemil, I was now Leonidas, and Manius Aelius had become Xerxes.
“He’s never mentioned you,” I stated.
Vitus did not look offended. “He was angry when I paid off my debt and bought my freedom. I was one of his best, and he didn’t want to lose me.”
I nodded. “He’s not happy with me either.”
“Aemil believed we were friends.” Vitus showed broken teeth in a smile. “I told him a gladiator and his lanista can never be friends, and I went. He never spoke to me again.”
Aemil must have learned his lesson by the time I departed, because he did not try to appeal to me with friendship. He offered me employment, with pay, but did not pretend to be amiable.
I took a sip of wine, which was watery and thin. “Now you work for Fabius?”
Vitus shrugged. “I’ve done other jobs—loading and unloading ships, exhibition fighting for a ludus in Pompeii, once that city’s ban on games was lifted.
Making sure no one robs Fabius is easiest. He needs me only during the day, and he locks up his funds at night behind the thick walls of his house. ”
“Why did you want to speak to me?” I asked, as though I hadn’t realized he’d overheard me asking Fabius about silk shipments.
“I know what gladiator you meant.” Vitus leaned forward, nearly overturning his wine cup with his bulk. “It was Xerxes. And I know exactly what illegal deeds he was doing.”