Chapter 23 #2
While we enjoyed the well-crafted treat from the pastry shop on the Esquiline, I told her everything I’d discovered, including Mihrdat waylaying Lucius and me, which was why Lucius was at Marcianus’s and no longer with me.
Cassia stilled when I told her about Mihrdat’s threats, her pastry half eaten. “Please do not approach him again,” she said in worry.
“I have no reason to. The one person I want to question is the maid Agapios told me about—Julia, the pastry maker says her name is. I doubt she’ll be as perilous as Mihrdat, but I don’t know how to contrive to meet her.”
Cassia resumed her pastry as she thought. “Horatia keeps much to herself because more respectable matrons want nothing to do with her. My former mistress could be blistering about her, claimed Horatia was born in a brothel, though I have never heard any evidence to verify this.”
“Do you know hordes of servants who work for her?” I asked, feeling slightly better now that I was full of strawberries, honey, and Cassia’s clear-headed wisdom. “And can slip me in the back door?”
“I’m acquainted with one, possibly two,” Cassia said. “I will send word to one of them tomorrow, before you go back.”
I slept longer than I meant to and awakened the next morning when Cassia tapped me with the end of the stick she kept for the purpose.
I came alert with a snort, not the nicest sound. Better, though, than lurching from sleep, ready to attack her, as I had the first morning when she’d tried to shake me awake.
“Do hurry,” Cassia told me as I sat up, rubbing my face. “I sent one of my messengers up the hill to Horatia’s domus, and I told them you’d be there before the fourth hour.”
From the slant of the sun, I guessed it was already a little past the third. I rinsed my face in water Cassia brought for me and donned a clean tunic, then gulped down a cup of wine, the only breakfast I had time for.
Hadrianus appeared as I readied myself to go.
I was surprised Samorix had released him again today, but Cassia informed me that Samorix sent word he was happy she’d begun to teach Hadrianus his letters—he’d be more useful about the shop if he could read.
Samorix had made it clear, however, that he wouldn’t pay her.
I didn’t want Hadrianus, as harmless as he seemed, alone in the apartment with Cassia, and she agreed to have him study with her in the wine merchant’s shop. I left them hunkered over the board in the wine merchant’s back room, Hadrianus’s large feet locked around the stool he sat on.
I took myself across the city, busy under fair skies, and up the Esquiline Hill. Cassia had explained to me that she’d arranged for Julia, the maid, to meet me outside a gate in the very back of the house, reached via an alley that ran between walls.
The noisome smells in the passageway when I entered it made me step carefully, but I found the back gate without mishap.
There was a bell to pull, but I didn’t want to alert more in the household than necessary. On the other hand, none might hear my knock.
While I debated what to do, the gate creaked open, and a young woman in a blue ankle-length tunic slipped into the passageway. The tunic was held at the shoulders by silver fibulae, and its linen cloth was very fine, the ensemble likely one of her mistress’s castoffs.
I expected hesitation, but Julia greeted me with a wide smile.
“It truly is Leonidas,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t quite believe it when I heard Leonidas the Spartan wanted to speak with me. I’ve seen every one of your matches.” She beamed at me, a happy admirer.
“You are Julia?” I asked her.
“Of course, I am.” She’d concealed something in her hand and now revealed a small pouch.
I stepped back warily, but what she drew from the pouch was only a shallow terracotta bowl.
“Would you scratch your mark on this? For my son.” Julia leaned closer to me and spoke conspiratorially.
“The mistress doesn’t know I have a son, so keep that a secret, if you please. ”
“I have no wish to speak to your mistress.” I took the stylus Julia handed me and scraped the letters for my name across the bottom of the bowl.
“You truly came to see me?” Julia examined the bowl with satisfaction and slid it back into the pouch. “Your interest pleases me, but if the mistress finds out, I’m done for. Gladiators are her treat.”
“Not for that.” I shook my head. “I came because you spoke to Xerxes. That last day, before he died.”
Julia’s expression dimmed. “Yes, I remember. Such a loss.”
Her true regret made me want to soften to her, but I held my resolve. “You tried to hand him something. What was it?”
Julia regarded me in confusion a moment, then her expression cleared.
“Oh, yes, I recall now. My mistress wanted to give him a confection from the pastry maker across the road. Nuts with cinnamon in a layered dough. I remember, because it is my son’s favorite.
When Xerxes refused it, I took it to my boy.
He liked his mum that day.” Her laugh was wistful.
“Xerxes didn’t eat it? Not even a bite?”
“Not a taste. He said he wanted to be light on his feet when he went out on the sand. Winked at me.” Julia sighed. “Oh, he was such a handsome man. The poor love.”
She confirmed the tale Agapios told me. The fact that her son was alive and well proved that the poison had not been in the pastry. If her son had even taken sick from it, she’d unquestionably have mentioned this.
“When you were speaking with Xerxes that afternoon, did you see anyone else near him?” I asked. “A man who might have passed close to him?”
I didn’t hold out much hope she’d remember. I was asking her to recall a brief incident that occurred more than two years ago, and she’d been more interested in taking a treat to her son.
“There was a man,” Julia said, frowning. “I thought it odd, because it was all ladies trying to get near Xerxes. This fellow pushed through us, nearly shoving me over, probably in a hurry to find his seat. I remember because I almost dropped the pastry, and I so wanted to give it to my boy.”
I held in my hopes with difficulty. “What did this man look like?”
Julia blinked. “I don’t know. He was struggling through a pack of women, not looking at us. A Roman, not a foreigner. I think.”
It was too much to expect. She’d corroborated Agapios’s memory, at least. I’d have to question Agapios again or have Cassia do it. She was skilled at dredging out recollections people had thought they’d long forgotten.
“There was one thing.” Julia’s face lit with sudden recollection. “I’ve just remembered. His face twitched, and twitched hard, as though he couldn’t help himself. I don’t recall the color of his hair or what he wore, but I do remember that. His entire left cheek rode up and down. Gruesome, it was.”
I stilled in sudden rage then swung away from her, my feet carrying me rapidly out of the passageway to the cleaner air of the street. I heard Julia calling after me, but I couldn’t stop to acknowledge her or thank her.
I knew what man she meant and exactly where I could put my hands on him.