Chapter 17
Outside the popina, the thick clouds had prevailed. Thunder rumbled and sudden rain pattered down. Those waiting in line for food to take home groaned but pulled cloaks over heads and stoically remained.
“How do you know about Xerxes?” I asked Vitus sharply.
“He was at the ludus with me,” Vitus answered, settling in comfortably against the wall.
“He was recruited not long after I was. Xerxes was a natural-born fighter and a showman, and he rose through the ranks very fast. He won many prizes—which Aemil took his cut of, as usual. I suppose Xerxes got into his side business because he wanted more money for himself.”
“Most gladiators do labor or bodyguard work, like you did,” I said. “They don’t rush into importing cloth.”
Vitus spread his hands. “You knew the man. Xerxes was fearless. If he saw a way to sell silk at a great profit, he’d do so.”
“He told you about it?”
“No.” Vitus gave me another of his wolflike smiles. “I caught him. He sneaked out of the ludus one night, at the same time I was returning from a day out. I grew curious, and I followed him.”
“Followed him where?”
Vitus paused for a drink before he answered.
“I expected he’d go to a brothel, and I was surprised when he headed to the Emporium instead.
That intrigued me, so I kept after him and watched him duck into the Porticus Aemilia.
The warehouse was teeming at that time, but I managed to keep Xerxes in sight. You’ll never believe who he met with.”
Vitus paused his narrative, obviously enjoying stringing me along.
“Who?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“A foreigner. One wearing the strangest clothes I’ve ever seen.
Xerxes stops and chats with him in his friendly way, and then he hands the man a bag of money.
I know it was money, because the foreigner opens the bag, takes out a few coins and tests them with his teeth.
Then he nods and tucks the money into his …
I guess you’d call it a tunic. It was long and billowing, and he wore very baggy and pleated trousers.
He was Scythian, or Parthian, or something. ”
“Parthian,” I repeated.
“Seemed like it from the odd clothes he wore. Anyway, Xerxes finishes with this man and then goes deeper into the warehouse. It was none of my business, but I was still curious, so I followed him on. He next finds and speaks to a Roman man, and Xerxes points at various pallets grouped along one wall. The Roman man lifts the tarps covering a few has a peek, then he gives Xerxes a tiny pouch, which Xerxes opens. It was too small to contain much money, but he looked very pleased with himself. He was less pleased when I stepped in his way as he left the warehouse.” Vitus chortled at the memory.
“Did you threaten him?” I asked, my ire stirring.
Vitus shook his head. “I didn’t care what he got up to, though I did ask for a small portion of what he’d just been paid to keep it to myself.
Xerxes offered to cut me in, said he had a resource to sell fabric to patrician matrons, who relied on him more than they did their usual merchants.
But I didn’t want to become a businessman—I only wanted a few coins to buy wine.
Xerxes laughed at me, but he paid up. Kept paying me regularly to keep my mouth shut, though I’d never have told anyone.
Why should I care if Xerxes found a way to make some extra cash?
Even after I gained my freedom, he’d come around with my sestertii and we’d have a cup of wine and reminisce about our days in the ludus.
Did that until he quit the venture.” Vitus let out a sigh and drained his cup.
“Doesn’t matter now, does it? Poor idiot. ”
“He quit the venture.” I fixed on the statement. “When?”
Vitus considered. “About a year after I left the ludus, I think. Aemil had brought you in by then, and you were making a name for yourself, just like Xerxes had. I’ve seen you fight.
You have amazing skill and let nothing unnerve you.
Xerxes was as skilled, but he never could stop showing off. Killed him in the end, didn’t it?”
I pushed the memories of Xerxes death and my dream away before they could cloud my thoughts.
I’d entered Aemil’s ludus the year after Nero had come to power. Xerxes and I had soon become friends, but he’d never mentioned Vitus—or Memnon as he was called then. Nor had I ever witnessed Xerxes slipping off in the night to conduct transactions in the Emporium.
As much as I’d like to believe that befriending me had made Xerxes think better of carrying on such a dangerous business, I doubted I’d influenced him much.
He’d either decided the venture was no longer worth the risk, or he’d made the money he’d set out to and was finished.
Or, someone had threatened him hard enough for him to withdraw.
Not long after our friendship began, we’d encountered Marcella at a tavern, and Xerxes had fallen hard for her.
He’d ever afterward focused all his energy on her, to Aemil’s disgust. Xerxes would have cut all ties to an illegal smuggling business for Marcella’s sake, I was very certain.
She might have ordered him to do it herself.
“Did Xerxes pay anyone else?” I asked. “To keep it quiet, I mean. He was willing to pay you—maybe he paid others as well.”
“Wouldn’t know. Didn’t ask. Like I said, I didn’t really care, but if Xerxes wanted to give me two sestertii every month, I wasn’t going to stop him.
When he brought me the final payment, he did act very worried.
Jumpy. Kept looking out my apartment’s doorway, as though fearing someone had followed him. ”
“Had they?” I asked.
“No idea.” Vitus signaled the proprietor for more wine.
I waited until the nervous server had filled our cups again and gone before I returned to my questions.
“Can you think of anything else?” I asked. “What did Xerxes say on that last day he visited you? It might be important.”
Vitus took a thoughtful slurp of wine. “I don’t recall his exact words.
It was years ago now, wasn’t it? But I think he was afraid of the foreigners, maybe the man I saw in the Porticus Aemilia.
Xerxes said it was the last time he’d pay me, because he was getting out of the trade.
Wasn’t going near it again. He’d lost his usual annoying joviality and looked gray about the lips. ”
“Someone did threaten him,” I said, half to myself.
“Seems like it. Xerxes said that if I talked, he’d deny what I claimed with all he had, because there would be no evidence it ever happened.
I told him again that I had no interest in what trouble he got into.
He paid over the coins, said goodbye, and I never saw him again.
Not until his last bout, some years later, when a second-rate gladiator stuck a sword into him.
That day, I finally saw you fight in anger.
” Vitus pointed a thick finger at me. “You didn’t give that Perseus a chance. ”
“Because he’d killed Xerxes,” I said flatly.
Vitus nodded. “I’d heard you and Xerxes had become great friends. Like I told Aemil, gladiators don’t make friends. Too risky.”
“Do you have any friends now?” I asked.
Vitus laughed in genuine mirth. “A few. Being a banker’s bodyguard makes me cautious.
Who knows if the man generous to me in a wine shop of an evening won’t try to conspire with me to rob Fabius the next day?
But they would be disappointed. I like Fabius.
He’s a fair man, so no, I won’t help anyone fleece him.
” He sent me a pointed look as though including me in that admonition.
“Would you recognize the foreign man if you saw him again?”
“I might.” Vitus appeared to be in no danger of rushing to the Emporium to find out. “I’d notice his bizarre clothes, anyway. If these easterners want to trade in Rome, they should adopt Roman dress, shouldn’t they?” He scowled in disapproval and drank more wine.
Arsakes and his men were Parthians, but they dressed in tunics and boots or sandals and were clean shaven. Arsakes had explained that they tried to blend in with Romans to grease the wheels of their trade.
Perhaps the silk merchant, whoever he was, preferred to keep his dress and customs. Parthians were proud people, descendants of the Persians, and had no intention of knuckling under to anyone. That was why there were so many border skirmishes in the east.
“Will you come to the Emporium with me and point him out?” I asked. The merchant Vitus had observed might have retired or started trading in another city, but it was worth the chance.
“No one will be there now,” Vitus said. “Not the merchants anyway. Just the laborers, and even they will break for supper.”
“Tonight, then,” I said. “About the time Xerxes met with him.”
Vitus shrugged. “Why not?” His brown eyes crinkled at the corners. “For two sestertii, same as Xerxes paid.”
Rain pelted down by the time I left the popina.
Vitus stayed put, saying he wanted a meal and to keep dry, but he agreed to meet me two hours before midnight at the Emporium.
I told him I’d pay him there, wanting to guarantee he’d arrive.
I’d have to ask Cassia for the coins, but I thought she’d be willing to part with them for the information.
Now to reach home without being swept away by the water rushing through the streets.
Small hailstones beat down on my head as I hastened around the Forum Augusti and started up the Quirinal. I had no cloak to cover me, and I flung up my arm to fend off the worst of the deluge.
When I reached the wine shop, the wine merchant called out to me from behind his counter. He’d pulled all his bottles and amphorae inside, with the shutters of the shop propped to shield the interior from the rain.
“The medicus is there,” he told me, pointing upward. “No one else has come.”
I thanked the man with a nod and unlocked the outer door, which someone—Cassia or the wine merchant—had prudently locked behind Marcianus. Marcianus himself would never have thought of it.