Chapter 20
How Cassia knew this, when Lucius had denied having spoken to Xerxes in many years, I had no idea, but Lucius began to sweat.
“Perhaps you should answer the lady,” Marcianus said, quietly stern. “With the truth.”
“Yes, yes, all right.” Lucius waved his hands about.
“You are correct. Xerxes—Manius—and I stayed in contact with each other after we were separated. Not at first, but once I heard that he’d become a gladiator, and a good one, I asked someone who was traveling to Rome to take him a message, telling him something only Manius and I would know, so he’d believe it came from me.
He sent word back, and we started a regular communication.
Though I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t know he’d died.
” Lucius sent me a stricken glance. “I’d been away in the east so long.
I was devastated when I learned he was gone. ”
“His messages would have stopped coming,” I pointed out.
“True, but I wouldn’t have realized that, because I’d gone farther into Parthia by then, almost to the mountains on the edge of it.
I thought the messages simply hadn’t reached me in the few years I’d been wandering between oases.
When I returned to Antioch, I contacted him, saying I was ready to start our silk importation again.
But I had no reply. Then Herminius sent me off once more, making me his administrator and prompting Fulvius to start conspiring against me.
When I realized Herminius no longer trusted me and wanted me arrested or simply killed, I decided to come to Rome and look for Xerxes. And then I found out he was long dead.”
Lucius sank down onto the stool, as though his legs would no longer support him, and buried his face in his hands. Marcia, next to him, regarded him with compassion.
As did I. Lucius’s sorrow seemed genuine. While I already knew Lucius was a good liar, I believed that Xerxes’s death had stunned him.
“How did you two decide to go into the silk trade together?” Cassia asked into the silence.
Lucius lifted his head and studied each of us in turn. “Whatever I say cannot go beyond this room,” he warned.
“We would never betray you,” Marcianus answered readily. Cassia nodded, and I gave him a nod as well. Arsakes said nothing, but I would make certain he did not repeat what Lucius told us.
“I was taught how to read and write once I belonged to Herminius, which is one reason he sent me on longer and longer journeys,” Lucius said.
“I could read manifests, sign for shipments, and collect and record payments. My brother never learned his letters, but I sent him notes a scribe could read out to him. When we were boys, we devised a code so that our master did not always know what we were talking about. I started using the same code in the messages, and Manius caught on and began using it back. One day he mentioned that if I could send him a portion of the silk I was trading, he could fetch a high price for it and split the profit with me.”
“He asked you to steal it?” Cassia asked in surprise.
“No, not exactly.” Lucius’s eyes flickered.
“I had the contacts, you see. When I negotiated with the traders on the Syrian coasts, I could make side deals with them to pick up silk bolts on my own. I sent these to Rome via a Parthian trader who didn’t mind making a bit extra on the side himself.
Manius would pay this Parthian upon delivery, and the Parthian would leave the silk in the Porticus Aemilia.
Manius would then inform a Roman merchant it was there, and that merchant would have the silk sold on to the matrons Manius knew, and they’d split the profits.
Then Manius would send me my cut, and we’d start all over again. ”
“Well thought out,” Cassia said. “You purchased the silk instead of stealing it and simply bypassed the trade rules and the taxes.”
“Something like that. We didn’t intend to stock entire warehouses—it was a few bolts at a time.”
A few bolts of silk imported from the far reaches of the east could bring in far more than Lucius could earn as a trader’s assistant and Xerxes could make in prize money.
Even after paying the Parthian and the Roman silk merchant, they’d still bring in enough wealth to make their lives very comfortable.
In theory, at least. Xerxes had never made any show of having money.
He might have carefully hoarded his profits to buy his way out of the ludus, or he might have given the funds to Marcella.
I wished he’d told me all this so I could make certain she’d received the money if he’d stashed it away somewhere.
“Manius was wonderful to work with,” Lucius said wistfully. “Uncomplicated and focused. He could entice coin out of the most tight-fisted matron on the Esquiline.”
“But Xerxes stopped his silk trading,” I said. “Something scared him, and he quit. That’s what Vitus told me.”
Lucius’s forehead wrinkled. “Who is Vitus?”
“The man you saw me talking to tonight. He was a gladiator at the same time as Xerxes. He found out about the scheme, and Xerxes paid him to look the other way. Vitus says that Xerxes gave him one final payment, about six years ago, saying he was finished with silk. Something had frightened him, but Vitus doesn’t know what. ”
Lucius shook his head. “I don’t know what either.
The Parthian shipper I used sold his business and retired, and I would have had to hunt for another I could trust. About that time, I started being sent further afield by Herminius, so I had no time to pursue it.
As I told you before, Herminius liked having someone who enjoyed all the traveling so he could stay home with his feet up. Manius and I lost touch.”
“Xerxes kept in contact with us.” Arsakes’s grating tones floated from the bunk. “With my mates and me.”
Lucius stared at him. “Why would he? We had four people in our enterprise—Manius, me, the Parthian shipper, and the merchant here in Rome. I know you asked me about him, Arsakes, but I thought you were interested in him as a gladiator.”
“Xerxes sent you a message once you had gone off into the deserts,” Arsakes said. “I intercepted it.”
Lucius regarded him with more confusion. “But we used our code. How would you know what the message meant? To you, it should have been musings on the weather and how much pastry he was eating.”
“Weren’t in no code. Was straightforward enough. Wanted another three bolts from your man in Antioch. So, I went to the man in Antioch and told him you sent me.”
“Ah.” Lucius deflated. “I see.”
Cassia broke in. “The person who sent that message must have been the false Xerxes. He didn’t know about the code. If Lucius had received the message, he’d have been suspicious at once, but Arsakes had no reason to be. Which means the man knew that Lucius would be out of the way.”
“It seemed like a good way to earn a bit of extra coin,” Arsakes said without regret. “I had the silk sent to Rome and was paid out by the same banker you’d set up in Antioch. Banker knew you and I both worked for Herminius and handed me the money without question.”
Lucius turned a faint shade of green. “He did, did he?”
Arsakes coughed, then winced and pressed his hand to his abdomen. “It was a nice business. Herminius was paying you more and more. Why shouldn’t my mates and I make something out of it?”
Lucius sighed. “I can follow your logic, I suppose. I’d already decided Manius and I should cease our trade now that I was traveling so much. The Parthian who went regularly to Rome had retired, plus I didn’t want anyone becoming suspicious of us.”
“But he didn’t cease,” Arsakes said. “At least the man who called himself Xerxes didn’t.
I suppose he eventually decided the business was growing too hot for him, because he recently tried to extort a huge sum from us to keep quiet about it to Herminius.
Chasing you to Rome was a good excuse to come and tell Xerxes we weren’t paying him anything.
And then we find the man called Xerxes has been dead for more than two years.
We thought you had something to do with that. ”
“How could I have? When he died, I was in Ctesiphon, so pleased with myself for rising so high in Herminius’s graces.” Lucius’s voice cracked.
“What we must determine.” Cassia’s cool tones cut in. “Is what frightened the real Xerxes enough to quit the trade, and why someone decided to kill him six years after that.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lucius said quickly. “I never wanted Manius to die. I assumed he’d finish out his time as a gladiator, and then we’d reunite and tear up the world, as we’d planned.”
“Wasn’t me that killed him,” Arsakes said. “Two years ago I was doing my job in Antioch, guarding warehouses and shipments for Herminius. Why would I want to kill Xerxes, when I was making money from him? Anyway, you tell me he was killed in the games, like any gladiator might be.”
“Not at all,” Cassia said in her crisp way. “He was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” Lucius stared at her. “How could he have been?”
Arsakes said nothing at all.
“That is what we are trying to determine,” Cassia said. “I believe this false Xerxes worried the true Xerxes would find out he’d kept up the silk trade with Lucius—or with who they thought was Lucius. I assume you continued to use Lucius’s name?” she asked Arsakes.
Arsakes shrugged. “Easiest.”
Lucius winced.
“Why wait so long to kill him?” I asked Cassia. “If he gave up the trade years ago, why did he die at the Saturnalian games only the year before I was freed?”
“At the Saturnalian games?” Lucius asked me in sudden dismay.
“Yes,” I said tersely. “Why?”
Lucius’s throat worked. “I sent him a letter. I told you, when I returned to Antioch that year, I thought Manius and I could start up the trade again. I sent word to him and asked if he wanted to continue, and maybe I’d come to Rome to discuss it.
Manius never wrote back, and I assumed that meant he was no longer interested.
Herminius sent me off again soon after that.
” Lucius’s voice became faint. “Manius would have received the message right before Saturnalia.”
The room stilled. Cassia ceased her writing and stared at Lucius, as did Marcia. Marcianus didn’t hide his shock, and even Arsakes lifted his head.
“Whoever was pretending to be Xerxes got the message instead,” I stated. “And worried that he was about to be exposed.”
“So, he somehow arranged for Xerxes to be poisoned,” Cassia concluded softly. “Xerxes would die in the games before he could find out Lucius was trying to communicate with him.”
Lucius groaned and covered his face once more. “I thought we were so clever. A gladiator and a slave newly made a freedman, making a fortune. Well, Fortuna had other ideas, didn’t she?”
We were silent again, while Lucius kept his face buried, his shoulders shaking the slightest bit.
“How did the Roman silk merchant you worked with not realize he wasn’t dealing with the real Xerxes?” Cassia asked gently. “Or did he, and he went along with it?”
Lucius lowered his hands, his eyes red-rimmed and wet. “He might not have known. Xerxes would have the shipment left in the warehouse and receive payment from an assistant. He never spoke with Xerxes directly.”
Which was what Vitus had observed the night he’d followed Xerxes. Xerxes had paid the Parthian shipper and then collected another pouch from the Roman he’d pointed out the pallets to further along the Porticus Aemilia.
“Who was the merchant?” I asked Lucius. “Do you know?”
“Of course I do. Manius found one most likely to deal with us and not ask questions. His name is Marcus Flavinus Mena.”