Chapter 3
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was a man of twenty-seven summers. While he liked to dress as a charioteer and declare that he won athletic games, he had a pudgy body and round, youthful face that sometimes bristled with whiskers and was sometimes clean-shaven.
Today he sported a beard that snaked across his pink chin. His curling brown hair had a red cast, but whether it spoke of his ancestry or a subtle dye, I was never certain.
He sat on his cushioned chair, arms folded over a silk tunic and folds of purple toga. He’d donned shin guards reminiscent of what I’d worn as a secutor, but these were of thinly beaten gold that would never protect against a sword thrust.
His attending slave stood at his shoulder, though the man’s nervous glance told me he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment.
Nero was in a sulk. He’d delayed the games after the parade, as Regulus had predicted, to Aemil’s great annoyance and the crowd’s restless displeasure.
The senator, Ennius Fabricius Drusus, whose seat was just beyond the thin wall that separated the princeps from the Roman masses, also sat with arms folded. Praetorian guards surrounded him, watching him carefully.
Nero rose to his feet when he saw me coming, fury darkening his ruddy face.
“Leonidas will find what was stolen,” he snapped at Drusus.
Drusus had a body that had once been trim and tight but had succumbed to softer living.
His bulbous head held a fringe of graying hair around his ears and pink cheeks that had been closely shaved this morning.
Thick gold rings flashed on his fingers, and he wore armbands of matching gold.
Any thief who’d come close to him had left those alone.
Drusus struggled up and faced Nero testily. “What mockery is this? He’s a gladiator .”
Nero’s eyes tightened. Drusus was a hairsbreadth from being made a spectacle of in the games today, possibly forced to battle an enraged bear. Prudence was keeping Nero from having him immediately arrested in such a public place, but Nero’s quick temper often got the better of prudence.
“Leonidas is a freedman and works for me,” the princeps said icily. “Tell him what you are missing, and he will retrieve it for you.”
Nero’s claim that I worked for him was not quite accurate, but I saw no benefit in correcting him. I owed my allegiance to a benefactor I’d never met and whose name I didn’t know. Nero hired me on occasion, or at least commanded my assistance, as he did now.
“It is not missing ,” Drusus declared. “ It was stolen. I saw the thief. I want him put to death. Immediately.”
Nero sent me a weary look, as though asking me to share his exasperation. “Leonidas will find your money and bring me the thief, for the justice due him.”
Drusus opened his mouth, likely to express doubt about Nero’s version of justice, but the Praetorian guard Servius shifted his stance slightly, and Drusus popped his mouth shut again.
“Leonidas is quite clever, for a gladiator,” Nero said. “You will tell him and his slave what happened. Where is she?” He fixed his gaze on me. “Where is Cassia?”
As though the name summoned her, I felt a breath of air by my side and the calming presence that was Cassia.
Nero relaxed visibly when he saw her. Cassia bowed as low as she could within the confines of the stands and the press of guards around us. She kept her head down, a fold of cloak across her nose and mouth, but the tension crackling through Nero’s box lessened.
“This is Cassia, a scribe,” Nero said to Drusus. “You will tell her all. Elsewhere. I will watch the games now.”
Drusus scowled at the dismissal, but another glance at the Praetorian guards kept him from arguing.
He turned away, saying nothing to me or Cassia, or Nero for that matter, and stamped past seats that had been quickly vacated by other senators during the confrontation. He dove through a dark hole in the wall that led to the stairs, a few guards following him, and was gone.
Nero flicked manicured fingers at us to follow him. Then he clapped his hands and raised them, a signal for the games to finally begin.
As the crowd cheered, he rose to his feet and cried out:
“Io, Saturnalia!”
The masses in the arena screamed it back at him. Below us, Aemil, in evident relief, waved at the first team of gladiators to make a start.
Amidst the noise, Cassia and I left the box and made our way down the stairs to seek Drusus.
The fact that Drusus hadn’t simply gone home in disgust told me that what he’d lost was valuable enough for him to let me try to find it.
He waited impatiently outside the arena with his lictors—men who followed wealthy or highborn men about, each carrying a symbolic bundle of staves over one shoulder. Lictors indicated a man’s status and also acted as bodyguards if necessary.
The two with Drusus eyed me in trepidation, as though regretting that they’d not practiced enough in the gymnasiums at the baths.
Cassia, still deferential, removed a wax tablet and stylus from her cloak and opened it, ready to take down whatever Drusus told us. Her quiet efficiency seemed to reassure the man somewhat, though he did not lose his scowl.
“As I climbed the stairs, a young man slammed into me,” Drusus said. He watched as Cassia made quick notes, as though he’d doubted her ability to write. “I did not notice at the time, but when I reached my seat, I realized my purse was missing. I had twenty aurei in it.”
Cassia raised her head, surprise making her forget to be servile. Even the lictors’ eyes widened.
An aureus was a gold coin worth twenty-five denarii or one hundred sestertii. A flask of wine cost one sestertius, the rent for our apartment, one denarius a month. The gold pin I wanted to buy Cassia was two denarii.
Twenty aurei was a fortune. The gold in the coins alone would bring whoever had stolen them a hefty profit.
Why Drusus would wander about Rome with so much money on him was more of mystery than who had taken it.
Cutpurses were rife on Rome’s streets, and brigands could wait in narrow, shadowy lanes for potential victims, not stopping at murder to relieve them of their valuables.
Most people weren’t foolish enough to carry so much wealth on their person.
Drusus not only carried too much money, but he wore plenty of gold on wrists and fingers. He’d also brought only these two lictors to guard him instead of a hefty fighter to deter robbers.
“Did you see the thief, sir?” I asked. “He brushed by you. Do you recall what he looked like?”
“No,” Drusus snapped. “I wasn’t noticing who was in my way.” He hesitated, as though a memory came to him. “He was small. Short and slim. Had a thick head of straight black hair, or would have been black if it hadn’t been so dusty.”
The description could match that of many men and boys in Rome. The thief could also have been a girl or small woman Drusus had mistaken for a male.
“What sort of tunic?” Cassia asked in her quiet voice.
Drusus shrugged. “Short. Dirty. A slave’s tunic.” His eyes narrowed. A slave stealing from him was not only a crime but a grave insult.
“Did he run out of the arena?” was Cassia’s next question. “Or into the seats?”
“Out, I think.” Drusus jerked his attention back to me.
“Find him. Shake the money out of him before he spends it. And then bring the slave to me, not to the princeps.” He nearly spat the title.
“We can never know if Nero will crucify a thief or turn him into a musician to accompany him. Or a lover.”
The curl of Drusus’s lip showed his contempt of Nero’s habit of trusting slaves and freedmen over his senators and advisors.
Cassia ducked her head again. I noticed she did not promise what she would do when she found the thief.
If we ever could. Rome thronged with revelers at Saturnalia, and more men than Drusus would be robbed this day. Almost every citizen could turn thief if given the opportunity.
Drusus was finished with us. He turned his back, as he’d done to Nero, and marched off into the crowds still streaming into the games. The lictors hastily fell into step behind him.
A sudden roar lifted inside the arena. A gladiator had either scored a good hit or gone down. No deaths yet. The first matches were to warm up the crowd. Then would come the executions, the animal hunts, and finally the bouts between famous gladiators.
Gladiators could die in exhibitions as well, when a sword slipped, as had happened to Xerxes, or a blunt weapon cracked too hard against a skull.
The sharp scent of blood came to me, scattering my earlier ease. My chest constricted and I heard a strange buzzing in my head.
A light touch cut through the darkness, as though I’d stepped into a tranquil garden bathed by a fountain and soft breeze. I drew a long breath.
Cassia studied me in understanding, her brown eyes gentle. I nodded and let her lead me from the arena, back into the streets of Rome.
The Circus Gai lay a little way from the Tiber, with few buildings near it. A narrow road led us toward the river and the Pons Agrippae, which would take us to the heart of the city.
Most people on the road were headed for the Circus, looking forward to a day out at the games. We fought our way against this current, having to twist and turn to seep through the revelers.
I was not in the best of humors. We’d rushed away before I’d secured payment from Aemil, and I knew him well enough to guess that he’d find ways to keep his money to himself.
Without the payment, it would take me much longer to find the money for Cassia’s gift. Saturnalia might be over before I’d gathered enough.
“How will we track down one thief in all of Rome?” I asked testily, once Cassia and I were able to walk side by side. The crowd thinned as we neared the river, most of those attending the games having reached the Circus by now.
“He’ll be a particularly rich thief,” Cassia pointed out with a touch of humor. “I doubt he knew exactly how much was in the senator’s purse.”
“Why did Drusus carry that much money with him? The man is a fool. Especially if he planned to attend the games.”
“He might have meant to place a large bet,” Cassia suggested. “Or to purchase something.”
“What could he buy out here for twenty aurei? For that much gold, he could stay home and have whatever it was brought to him.”
“It is interesting, isn’t it?” Cassia said, ignoring my irritation. “Not a Saturnalian gift, surely. It is fashionable for the patrician classes to give each other very low-value presents for Saturnalia. The cheaper or sillier the object, the more it indicates affection for the receiver.”
I didn’t bother to comment on how ridiculous that was.
We reached the Pons Agrippae and crossed it, the wide arched bridge taking us to the Campus Flaminius and its public buildings and temples.
I expected Cassia to turn east for the Quirinal once we passed the Theatrum Marcelli. At home, we’d refresh ourselves and discuss how we’d find one small person—male or female—in all of Rome for the senator and Nero.
Instead, Cassia headed south, past the Forum Bovarium and made for the Aventine.
While most people had gone to the games today, there were still plenty taking advantage of the holiday to run last-minute errands or maybe break into empty apartments or domii. I couldn’t get close enough to ask where Cassia was going until we’d entered a street at the base of the hill.
“If you want to speak to Nonus Marcianus, he’s at the games,” I said. Marcianus’s home and practice were nearby, but at the moment, he’d be at the Circus to set broken bones, sew up wounds, or take dead gladiators away for burial.
“I know,” Cassia said. “I seek someone else.”
“Who?” I demanded.
She turned to me serenely. “The thief. If I am right, I know who he is and where his family lives.”
Cassia smiled at my astonishment and strolled on without further word.