Chapter 27
The skies had opened, and rain pooled in the streets by the time I was able to walk enough to leave the cellar.
We journeyed out through the tunnels, which Cassia and I had spent many a day in, she making marks on walls and me stretching cords between hooks I’d jammed into old masonry.
I didn’t mind the rain on my face when we emerged. I was too happy to be in the open air, Rome’s sewers tucked safely away under the holes that drained the streets. I decided it would be a long while before I went underground again.
We left the tunnels near a bridge to the Transtiberim, so Hadrianus could return to Samorix before Samorix reported him as a runaway slave.
“We will continue the lessons another day,” Cassia promised him.
Hadrianus nodded at her then loped away through the rain, back to his servitude.
“Can we trust him?” Lucius asked as he watched Hadrianus’s large body move across the wet bridge.
“Oh, yes,” Cassia said. “Once he learns to communicate, I will try to find him better employment.”
“Samorix will have to agree to sell him,” I warned. My voice was still hoarse, my throat aching.
“I’ll find a buyer who will give Samorix a price he cannot resist,” Cassia answered. “Hadrianus is resourceful and quick-witted, which is more than Samorix deserves.”
So declaring, Cassia turned from the bridge to begin our journey home.
Marcianus and Marcia broke from us when we reached the Aventine. “Drink plenty of wine mixed with water,” Marcianus instructed me. “It will flush any lingering poison from your blood. Eat only bread and eggs for a few days and visit the latrine often.”
With that, he lifted his hand in a cheery wave and led Marcia away.
Lucius, his silk-lined cloak restored, escorted us the rest of the way home.
Once there, I shed my wet sandals—Cassia had rescued the one that had fallen off—and approached the altar to the ancestors on bare feet.
I touched the scroll that held Xerxes’s name. “I found him,” I whispered to it. “I avenged you.”
I expected a flood of relief and peace to fill me as I spoke the words, the knowledge that I’d exacted retribution for a man I grieved.
But the room remained gray and gloomy, the pattering rain outside turning to hail. Tiny balls of ice beat on the roof and bounced inside through our open windows.
The scroll with Xerxes’s name was just a scroll with letters on it, sitting on a table against a wall. Xerxes was gone, and knowing how he’d died and who had killed him did not restore him to the world.
You’re an idiot, Leonidas, I thought I heard him say. It doesn’t matter anymore. You have so much now. Enjoy it and bless your luck.
I miss you, I sent silently back to him.
Of course you do. I was an amazing friend. But you have Cassia now. Only a complete fool would trade her for the likes of me.
While his words rang of truth, Xerxes had been a better friend than he would admit. He’d put my wellbeing above a lucrative trade that could have made him wealthy enough to buy his freedom and keep Marcella like a queen.
Thank you, I said. For what you did for me.
Now you’re growing maudlin. What good is money if everyone you love is dead?
He had a point. Xerxes’s voice faded, leaving me standing with my fingertips on his name.
I felt a warm presence at my side and looked down to see Cassia watching me, understanding in her eyes.
Xerxes was right about one thing. I was incredibly lucky to have this woman in my life, and when I had my way one day, she’d never have to fear anything again.
I wanted to take her hands, touch my forehead to hers, and thank her for finding me today. She’d saved my life once again.
But Lucius hovered, looking too much like Xerxes and not enough like him at the same time.
“I’m going back to Marcella’s,” Lucius announced. “And pray she doesn’t slay me on sight. She needs help, that lady. She pretends she can run the farm and raise all those children on her own, but she can’t, not really.”
“Xerxes would have given her everything he’d earned from your silk trade,” I said. “Before he gave it up, he must have hoarded a fortune.”
Lucius shook his head. “Not by the looks of things. Marcella is good with the farm, but there are no riches there.”
I frowned, softer emotions fleeing. “Then what happened to it? He never spent much of anything, always made someone else pay for his drinks.”
“Who knows?” Lucius shrugged. “He might have gambled it on the chariot races. Xerxes never had much of a head for money. It was more of a game to him, like being a gladiator, to see how far he could rise before he was stopped.”
I heard Xerxes’s whisper on the air once more, laughter tinged with mockery. My brother doesn’t know me at all, does he? But you always did.
I lapsed into thought while Cassia and Lucius continued the conversation.
“You won’t return to Antioch?” Cassia asked him. “You were growing rich there.”
“No, I think that part of my life is over.” Lucius sighed.
“Herminius and Fulvius will have blackened my reputation, even if Arsakes and his friends convince him I’m innocent of embezzling.
I have decided I will return to where I began, a farm.
Besides, Marcella’s offspring are my nephews and nieces, and it is time I cared for my family.
” He unpinned his cloak and removed it with dramatic flourish.
“Sell this for me, Cassia. It is hardly fit for mud and goats.”
Cassia caught the cloak and folded it into a neat bundle. “I will make certain you get a fair price.”
Lucius smiled weakly at her. “Wish me luck.”
“We will accompany you,” Cassia announced. “I love to visit Marcella, and the country air will do Leonidas good. We can depart as soon as—”
“No.” My harsh word made them both stop and stare at me in astonishment. “There is something I must do first.”
I was still weak and let Cassia push the bread and eggs on me that Marcianus had prescribed, but as soon as the rain slackened, I left the house.
Cassia insisted on coming with me, as did Lucius. While they badgered me with questions about where we were going, I couldn’t answer them. I led them silently across the Campus Martius to the Pons Agrippae and across the bridge to the street that led to the ludus.
Plinius, guarding today, let me in without question, though he gazed in curiosity at Cassia and Lucius.
I ignored Aemil, who came growling to meet me, Regulus and his usual glare, and the gladiators who’d known Xerxes gaping at Lucius in shock.
I passed them all to stride down the line of cells until I reached the one that had been mine. Regulus now slept in it, and he charged after me, demanding to know what I was doing.
I yanked open the cell’s door and went inside, halting to stare up at the ceiling. All the cells on this corridor were basically small vaults, and while the ceiling in this one didn’t soar, it was high enough for me to stand upright and reach my arms above my head.
The vaults were made of plain stone, hewn and fitted together by some long-ago slave. Xerxes had once sketched erotic figures on the ceiling above my bed, to startle me when I laid down to sleep. I could still hear his laughter ringing down the arcade.
Aemil had gouged out most of the drawings, telling me they hadn’t been meant for Regulus, who’d taken over the cell of the primus palus when I’d departed.
I stepped on top of the bunk and studied the faint markings that remained.
“Leonidas, get out of there before I pull your arms off,” Regulus growled. “And who is this man with Xerxes’s ugly face? If it’s his ghost, I expected it to smell better.”
Lucius laughed, an echo of Xerxes’s. Aemil and those who’d known Xerxes went still at the sound.
“Someone bring me a chisel,” I commanded.
No one moved. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassia, who’d followed me into the cell, draw a breath to give orders, but before she could say anything, hurried footsteps sounded.
“Here.” Agapios pushed through the gladiators and handed me a chisel with a small hammer to go with it.
I took both with a nod of thanks, then I put the chisel next to the exaggerated naked male figure Xerxes had drawn and banged it into the stone.
Regulus snarled, and Aemil snapped out of his daze.
“If you bring my ludus down around us, you’ll pay for the rest of your life,” he threatened.
I continued to pound. Dust and stones rained onto the bed and the floor, driving Regulus and Aemil out of the cell. Cassia wound her cloak around her head and backed away but remained.
“What are you doing?” Lucius asked in curiosity from behind Aemil.
I didn’t spare breath to answer. My body was sore and exhausted from the poison and the struggle with Aulus, and only a strange fire drove me to carry out my task.
I found nothing behind the first stone, or the second, or the third. Regulus had just declared he would drag me out and beat me when the chisel went through mortar and into empty air.
Another rude figure, its lines almost gone, filled this stone, a drawing of a man doing impossible things with his own body. I cut through him, prying out the large chunk of stone with the iron chisel.
The stone came free. Five leather bags about the size of my palm fell from the opening behind it, the bags clinking as they landed on the bunk at my feet.
I leapt down and caught them up before Regulus could push in. Cassia managed to wedge her way next to me as I opened the bags.
Coins, many of them gold, lay inside, shining out at me in untarnished wonder.
“Oh,” Cassia whispered.
“That clever bastard,” Lucius said. “He left them to you, Leonidas, obviously.”
“He knew they’d be safe with me.” I closed the bags. “He didn’t realize I would be freed and leave the ludus behind.”
“Then they’re mine,” Regulus declared, blocking our way out. “This is my cell now.”
“You mean mine,” Aemil contradicted. “This is my ludus.”
I hugged the bags to my chest and shoved Regulus aside with one blow of my shoulder. Cassia hastened out through the hole I made.
“No.” I faced Aemil and spoke so only he would hear. “They belong to Marcella.”
Aemil glared at me a long moment, then he nodded. I left him resigned, Regulus enraged, and Agapios delighted, and led Cassia and Lucius back to the street.
When we reached home, Cassia sent Lucius out to purchase food, and hid the money under a stone next to my bunk once he was gone. I slept there all night, guarding the bags, letting Lucius wonder where we’ done with them.
We left in the morning for Marcella’s farm. The sun rose into a clear sky, the rain finished for now. A few puddles soaked the Via Latina as we headed along it for Marcella’s farm, but those dried quickly as the day heated.
Today, I’d hired a donkey for Cassia, to spare her feet. Lucius led the beast, while I carried her bag of tablets, at the bottom of which lay the sacks of coins. I had a knife displayed in my belt and kept a sharp eye out for thieves, making certain no one we passed came anywhere near us.
“I had a message from Arsakes this morning,” Cassia said as we traveled along. “He and his friends burned Gotarz’s body and will be taking his ashes home, once Arsakes is well enough to travel, to Gotarz’s family’s tomb.”
I turned my gaze from Mount Algidus and its timeless ridge on the horizon to rest on Cassia.
“Another of Aulus’s victims,” I said.
I’d tried all night not to think of Aulus desperately struggling to keep afloat in the wild waters under the city and ultimately failing. His body would wash up downstream somewhere, probably a long way away, given how the rain had been pounding, another victim of the flooding Tiber.
I was supposed to have taken him to Nero, but I’d make my report to Hesiodos about what happened once we returned. By this time, Nero might not even recall his instructions to us.
“Aulus was a selfish and greedy man,” Cassia said decidedly.
“He had no cause to murder Xerxes, or Gotarz, or you. He only wished to keep himself safe from anyone discovering his illicit silk business.” She became thoughtful.
“I wonder what he did with all his money? He dressed austerely and continued to work for another man.”
“So no one would suspect,” Lucius suggested. “Maybe he hid his cash, like Xerxes, except in a villa somewhere, where he could retire once he’d killed everyone who could betray him.”
“Near the coast, I’d think,” Cassia said. “Perhaps in Baiae or a nearby town on the coast. Who would inherit such a house, if it was paid for by ill-gotten gains? Will the princeps confiscate it? Or let whoever stumbles across it keep it?”
“No.” My sharp word made Cassia jump, and the donkey snorted. “You will not run to Baiae searching for a villa full of riches that likely doesn’t exist. We are going to Marcella’s farm. That does exist.”
Cassia laughed. She rarely did, and the sound was like music. “You are right, Leonidas. Why chase the improbable, when I can enjoy what I have at this moment?”
Xerxes’s ghost had said the same to me, in almost those words.
Lucius’s eyes had sparkled with interest at the possible villa, but he laughed with Cassia and agreed Marcella’s farm would suit us well enough.
Marcella’s horde came screaming from the farmhouse as we approached, with cries of greeting for Uncle Lucius along with the ones for me and Cassia. The children had already grown fond of Lucius, which made me soften to him a bit. Children instinctively trusted or mistrusted with canny perception.
“So, you brought him back.” Marcella stood with hands on hips, gazing at Lucius with disapproval. “Though I am glad to see you, Leonidas, and always you, Cassia.”
Two of the boys caught Lucius’s hands, and the brood dragged Lucius into the house. Ennius led away the donkey when I lifted Cassia from it and set her on her feet.
“Wait,” I said to Marcella as she started to follow the others through the gate. I opened Cassia’s bag and extracted the five pouches. “Xerxes’s last gift to you.”
I pressed the bags into Marcella’s hands while she stared, mystified. Marcella opened one, saw the coins inside, and ceased breathing.
“He’d hidden them,” Cassia explained in a gentle tone. “Yesterday, Leonidas realized where.”
Marcella lifted her head, gazing at both of us in stupefaction. She peered down at the coins again, then she abruptly lifted the bags to her face and began to cry with heartbroken sobs.
Cassia laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, and I stepped close to Cassia, my own eyes stinging.
Thank you, Leonidas, Xerxes’s whisper came to me. Tell Marcella I love her. And my little ones too. They must be growing so tall …
The whisper faded on the wind. Cassia’s hand sought mine, and she looked up at me in understanding. Sunshine caught in her eyes like a flash of fire, to rival the red silk that lined Lucius’s cloak.