Chapter IV
IV
CRICKETS SANG IN THE SHADOWS at the edge of the street as Felix pushed the door open and stepped into the not-quite-square courtyard of the insula apartment that towered six stories above his head before opening to the pink evening sky.
He let out a breath, tension already beginning to slip from his shoulders.
No creditors had followed him home this time, though he’d had the distinct feeling of being watched.
He crossed the courtyard, avoiding the few women still waiting for their turn to heat their evening meals at the braziers set up around the central fountain.
An inconvenience, perhaps, but not as inconvenient as a fire from firepots kept inside the apartments.
A quick scan of the women told him his family’s meal was already done—or that there was no meal to heat. Most likely the latter.
The door of their ground-floor apartment, which shared a back wall with a secondhand shop on the street side, stood ajar.
He’d told the girls dozens of times to keep it shut and barred, but letting in light and neighbors always seemed to trump safety.
He sighed and stepped inside, blinking the sudden dimness into focus.
The main room was crowded with the family loom, low dining table, and his bedroll stuffed into a corner.
Two doorways along the side wall were hung with curtains and hid his parents’ sleeping chamber and one for his three sisters.
His eyes barely adjusted before he was accosted on all sides. There was no place in Rome like home.
“I’m so glad you’re home.” His ten-year-old sister latched on to one arm. “Felicia is unbearable today and it’s not my fault!”
“Hello to you too, Oppia.” He ruffled her head, mussing her braids, then shot a wink toward his twelve-year-old sister, Cassia, who returned it with a look of apologetic warning as she continued to silently slice bread at the worktable.
“Felix, Oppia is ruining my life!” Felicia sprang up from her stool, where she’d been bent over stitching near the courtyard window.
“What happened?” He glanced around the room again. “Where’s Mater?”
“She met a man!” Oppia sang, swinging on his arm.
Felicia balled her stitching and hurled it at Oppia, who ducked. The embroidered shawl flopped against Felix’s shoulder. He caught it and frowned.
“Mater or Felicia?”
Cassia looked up and translated. “Felicia met a man. Mater’s gone out.”
“It’s the blade seller we meet every week to sharpen the kitchen knives,” Oppia blurted with a giggle.
Felicia growled, “Shush your mouth, you little squawking pigeon.”
“You get the knives sharpened every week?” Felix ran a hand over his face. That seemed excessive. How much was that costing them?
Oppia ducked Felicia’s mad swing and laughed. “We have to. Felicia scrapes them on the edge of the fountain—ow! Felix, make her stop!”
Felix wrestled the girls apart. “Oppia, I think you need to stop.”
Felicia’s face flushed. “She’s the reason I’m fifteen and not married—and I never will be!” She crossed her arms. “She told him I was bald and pasted my eyebrows on!”
Oppia jutted out her chin. “And that only made him stare at you more. You’re welcome.”
Felix bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a laugh that Felicia saw coming anyway. She huffed and stalked into the shared bedroom, curtain billowing in her wake.
Oppia hopped to her feet and tucked her hand into his with a satisfied smile. “You always say we stay together no matter what. You’re lucky I listen. No one’s taking our sisters on my watch.”
“Telling people Felicia’s bald is not exactly what I had in mind.” No one who saw Felicia would believe that anyway. “Where’s Mater? It’s getting dark.”
“Upstairs. Helping a friend of hers.”
“Again?” He moved to the table and pinched up a crumb of Cassia’s bread. “How many needy friends does she have?”
“Mater is generous. Word gets around.”
He popped the crumb in his mouth. “Yes, well, word also gets around that we don’t have money to be generous with. And I told you to keep the doors bolted while I’m gone.”
“The creditor was already here this morning.” Oppia leaned on the table. “Mater turned him away.”
Felix ran a hand over his face. “What did he say?”
Cassia rested the newly sharpened knife on the edge of the table and looked up. “The same. That Pater owes him money and we must pay it back or—” She glanced at Oppia before turning worried eyes on Felix. “They’re getting growly.”
“I know.” The tension that had left earlier crept back into his shoulders, coiled and laced with anger.
Since leaving the family business at the Ludus Gallicus five years ago, Pater had tried and failed a dozen ventures.
This latest was worse than any of the others combined.
He’d gone into plumbing. Borrowed a year’s wages to commission drainage tiles for a building project and then promptly disappeared.
Mater had theories—all of them hinging on Pater’s innocence—but she had nothing Felix would count as substantial proof.
A letter speaking vaguely of trouble and a trip to the south of Gaul, but nothing since.
Felix would have hired a man to hunt Pater down, if the creditors hadn’t insisted on visiting and laying claim to every coin they had.
Felix pushed away from the table. “Where’s my box?”
Cassia turned and dug it out from the bottom shelf of kitchen things. She slid it toward him, refusing to meet his gaze.
Felix slipped the latch and flipped open the lid, angling the box to allow the lamplight to fall on a clutter of objects.
Generations of the Cassianus family had found their livelihood in gladiator ludi.
Training, managing, and—according to family lore and the roll of crumbling emancipation papers in the bottom of the box—fighting.
Felix had spent ten years in Alexandria training under the best physicians in the empire, intending all the while to return to Rome and the ludus.
But all had changed one day when he’d paused to hear a Coptic monk in the city forum.
And after listening to the man’s preaching, seeing his passion and compassion, he couldn’t help but be further drawn by a God of love, mercy, and justice.
He’d written home to tell his father that he’d not be joining the family business after all, and Pater had responded in relief.
Felix learned his parents had converted some months before and his father had already left the ludus—and not on happy terms. His uncle Jovan had remained as sole lanista—manager of the Ludus Gallicus—and the brothers hadn’t spoken since.
Felix picked up several bronze medallions, awards from his education in Alexandria.
Best in Theory, Best in Practice, Best in Oratory.
Worthless things, as it turned out. He’d dreamed of returning to Rome armed with knowledge and hope that he’d make a fine living working as a medicus among the upper classes.
Instead, he’d returned to find his family disgraced and his pater missing with a large sum of money.
Felix had tried to find respectable work, but as the weeks leaned toward a month, and creditors hounded his mater, Felix had found himself petitioning the only place available to him.
God forgive him, but he’d returned to the Ludus Gallicus.
He set the medallions aside, noting the tiny smattering of coins scattered across the bottom of the box. He tipped them into his hand, gut sinking.
“Where did you say Mater went?”
Cassia shifted. “Her friend was so distraught and—”
Felix growled and slammed the coins back into the box.
“This money is for the creditors, not beggars! We can’t keep giving everything away.
” He raked his fingers through his hair and laced them at the back of his neck.
Did no one in his family have a pinch of sense?
Dulling knives to have an excuse to hire a blade sharpener, giving money away to anyone who asked, investing in the stupidest business plans . . . He heaved a frustrated sigh.
Oppia poked him. “You have blood on your tunic.”
He dropped his hands and twisted to look. “It’s from work. A gladiatrix took a sword to the arm.”
“Which one? Don’t say Tilla, she’s my favorite!”
“The —and you’re not supposed to be following the fighters. Mater’ll hand your hide to the tanners.”
Oppia rolled her eyes. “You follow the fights.”
“Only to patch up the gladiators after.”
“Ah, Felix, you’re home,” Mater’s cheery voice greeted from behind as she stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind her.
“Mater!” Oppia squealed, rushing to greet her with an enthusiastic hug that rivaled the one she’d bestowed on Felix.
He turned, box in hand, preparing a lecture he shouldn’t have to give to the woman who’d raised him.
Mater tugged her palla from her fading brown hair and handed it to Oppia, then turned a smile on Felix. “You look tired, love. You need to sleep more.”
He nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. Him, sleep more? How could he, when so much needed to be done? “This money is for the creditors, Mater, not any person with a sad tale.”
“Your pater will take care of the creditors. He always has.”
She couldn’t possibly be so naive. “No one’s heard from him in months. He disappeared with a loan worth a year’s wages and no word.”
“Give him time.”
“He’s done nothing but make poor investments, time and again. This plumbing venture is no different than every other failed attempt—or maybe it is. Because this time he went too far and decided to cut his losses and abandon us.”
“He’s not abandoned us. His letter said . . .” Mater didn’t continue. Couldn’t. The letter had said very little, and even less that might suggest anything hopeful. Her lips trembled. “He would never leave us like that. Have a bit of faith—”
“I have faith, Mater. Just not in him.” Felix bit his lip at the sharpness of his words. Apparently, going too far ran in the family. Desperation made even good men consider terrible things. And do them. He’d been desperate enough to crawl back to the ludus, after all.
Felix sighed. “We can’t wait around for a miracle. No bags of coin are going to appear in our shoes overnight, no matter what the stories say about saints and desperate people. And I’m not willing to let all of you starve even if Pater didn’t care what straits he left us in.”
Mater’s expression shuttered. “He didn’t—”
Anger rushed through him. “He did. He did, and I’m left to clean up his mess and try to keep us afloat.” He regretted the harshness of his words as soon as he spoke them.
“Do not speak of him like that.” Tears swelled and hung on her bottom lashes as she pressed her lips together.
He let out a deflating breath and set the box on the table, braced his hands on the edge.
How could his mother cling to the goodness of his pater after all he’d done?
He’d all but ruined and abandoned the family, and yet, if he showed up at the door, Felix had no doubt Mater would welcome him with open arms. Was it possible for a person to be too forgiving?
As if to prove his point, Mater wrapped an arm around his shoulders and gave a squeeze. “What’s done is done, Felix. It’s your choice now what you do with it.”
“I’m already doing everything I can.” And it wouldn’t make an iota of difference if she didn’t stop handing out every sesterce he brought home. She was nearly as bad at money management as Pater.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
He sighed, too tired to untangle her meaning.
She patted his shoulder and straightened. “But I’m glad you’re home, anyway. Tulla Aemilus has a terrible flare-up of gout. Poor thing can hardly walk down the stairs.”
Felix tried to rub away the ache beginning to throb in his temple. “She needs a plaster of mallow root boiled in wine—”
“Excellent. Will you go see her? She’s on the third floor.”
“Can she pay?”
Mater blew out an exasperated breath. “God has blessed you with all this education and you want to charge for it?”
“Mater—”
“Of course she’ll try to pay you—”
Felix’s tension eased. Slightly.
“—possibly in pine nuts or cheese.” Mater took his arm, suddenly beaming. “Which is a miracle in itself since all we have for the evening meal is bread. See? The Lord provides. The least you can do is thank Him with a plaster of mallow root and wine.”