Chapter 4
I followed Cassia past the turnoff to Marcianus’s home and along a street that grew narrower as we went. This lane ran behind insulae that lined the base of the hill, finer homes rising above us.
Just before the path ended in a blank space between high walls, Cassia pivoted and started up a staircase cut into the hill. I hastened after her, not liking the dim closeness of the passageway.
We encountered no one at all as we ascended, to my surprise. The cutthroats who would wait in a confined space like this must also be at the games today.
We emerged into another lane, this one lined with buildings that could barely be called homes.
They were low, built against the backs of insulae on the main streets, and consisted of slanted walls, slabs of tiled roofs, and small arched openings.
I could see inside the doorways as we passed—the apartments were more or less alcoves that contained a stool and table or pallet, or nothing at all.
Cassia stopped in front of one arch that had a thin cloth tacked over its opening. She scratched at the cloth and called inside.
She spoke Greek, so I did not understand her, but she clearly expected those inside to know that language.
We waited in silence for a long moment before a woman who couldn’t be long past twenty summers pulled back the curtain. She was slim, with straight black hair, but too tall, I thought, to be the thief Drusus described.
She started violently when she saw me, and froze, her hand on the curtain.
Cassia spoke again, her tone reassuring. The young woman darted back inside, her voice rising as she called to someone there. Cassia caught the curtain before it dropped and followed her in.
The inside of the hovel was as shallow as the others I’d passed, the back wall composed of the rough bricks of whatever insulae or house lay behind it. The room held only a table and three stools, one of which had been hastily pushed back.
Another curtain closed us off from whatever spaces lay beyond.
The woman had disappeared behind this second cloth, but before it fluttered closed, I spied the family’s shrine—a table containing an oil lamp and a small, closed wooden cupboard.
Oddly, I saw no masks or tokens of their ancestors, though I reasoned that, being Greek, they might have different traditions.
“Leave the rudis against the wall,” Cassia whispered to me. “They are frightened of gladiators. Any armed men, actually.”
“Who are they?” I whispered back. I propped the rudis against the wall beside the door, the stones there so rough they had no trouble keeping the sword upright.
“Her husband is a freedman, a laborer, working as he can. They’re from Philippi.”
She named a city in the Greek mainland, in Macedonia.
It was a Roman colony now, I knew from a gladiator who’d been captured and sold into the games from there.
He’d claimed his grandfather had fought in a battle near Philippi between Marcus Antonius and Octavian before Octavian had become Augustus, many years ago.
I’d never been able to find out more about this story, because Aemil had traded him soon after his arrival.
I wanted to ask Cassia more questions, such as what she’d meant when she’d said she knew the thief, but the woman abruptly returned.
She pushed a boy in front of her, her fingers clamped around the base of his neck. The boy had straight black hair that was pale with dust and wore a soiled tunic, exactly as Drusus had described. The lad hung his head but peeped up at us defiantly.
The woman I assumed to be his mother said something rapidly to Cassia, who answered as rapidly. I continued staring at the boy, who studied me.
“Are you a gladiator?” he asked me in accented street Latin.
“Yes,” I answered the lad.
“Have you come to kill us?” He sounded curious, not afraid.
“No.” I opened my hands to indicate I carried no weapon. “Why did you steal the senator’s purse?”
The boy showed no surprise I knew this, or any shame. He shrugged. “Thought we needed the pennies more than he did.”
The women was now scowling at me, angry but also afraid. If Cassia or I brought the cohorts in to arrest the lad for theft, the entire family could be taken, and executed alongside him.
The boy wasn’t a slave, as Drusus had assumed.
Cassia had said his father was a freedman, and his wife, or whatever relation she was to him, wasn’t a slave either, else she’d be currently out working for whoever owned her.
The tunics of freedman and slaves were similar, and the lad’s was grubby, so I understood Drusus’s mistake.
“It wasn’t pennies, though,” I said to him.
The boy finally looked worried. “No, it wasn’t.”
The mother asked Cassia a sharp question, probably demanding to know what was being said.
Cassia answered, then the mother, with a grunt of exasperation, dove into the back room and came out again carrying a pouch made of thin leather.
She held it out in front of her as though it contained burning oil. Cassia carefully took it from her and opened the drawstrings.
I peered over Cassia’s shoulder, my breath catching at the pile of gold coins that glimmered within. Again I wondered what idiot would carry such an amount to the games, with only ineffectual bodyguards to look after him.
Cassia asked the boy a question, and he shook his head adamantly.
“It’s all there,” the lad said to me. “If I spent that , I’d be caught right away, wouldn’t I? I meant to put it aside until I found someone who could change the aurei for smaller coins.”
True, if he persuaded a lender or merchant who wasn’t too troubled where his wares came from to exchange the gold for silver or copper coins, the lad could more easily purchase things without anyone questioning him.
Cassia answered before I could. “Never a good idea to trust a crooked moneylender, Ariston. They might tell the cohorts about you if they were ever caught with the gold. I will give these coins back to the senator, and no one will need to know what you did.”
Ariston nodded, looking more disappointed than relieved.
The outer doorway darkened, and all four of us swung around, but Ariston and his mother instantly relaxed. A man Ariston greatly resembled stepped hesitantly in from the street, eyeing me in trepidation.
Cassia quickly spoke to him in Greek, and the man’s shoulders loosened. He gave me a nod.
“Cassia has told us about you,” he said in stilted Latin.
“This is Epikrates,” Cassia said. “His wife is Korinna. I met them on a market street one morning some months ago, when Ariston had broken his wrist. I sent them to Marcianus for him to set it, as he speaks Greek, in addition to being the best medicus in Rome.”
“Very kind of her,” Epikrates said with a fond glance at Cassia. “What brings you here?”
Korinna, tight-lipped, began to explain what had happened, using many gestures at her son, the bag Cassia held, and me. Epikrates’s sun-bronzed face lost color as his wife spoke.
The paterfamilias of a household had the right to beat a son who’d brought danger to the family, even going so far as killing him if he felt it was just.
Epikrates showed no such inclination. He went down on one knee before Ariston and held his son’s gaze before speaking to him in their own language, his voice gentle.
As Ariston listened, his body drooped, and tears appeared in his dark eyes. He squeaked words back to his father, his tone chagrined.
Epikrates stroked Ariston’s hair, gave the tearful boy a quick embrace, then stood to face me.
“He shall never do it again,” the man declared. “He saw how desperate we were becoming. I have been trying to find work in the last days, but I fail. It is December, and everyone takes a holiday. Ariston thought he was helping us.”
I was skeptical that Ariston would never try thieving again but did not say so. If Cassia had not recognized the boy and realized he’d plunged into something out of his depth, he might have gotten away with the theft. There was nothing to say he wouldn’t try again, with a safer target.
But I might be able to help this family in my own way.
“Gnaeus Gallus is an architectus and builder,” I told Epikrates. “His office is on the Clivus Pullius on the lower slope of the Oppian Hill. He is always in need of workers. Tell him I sent you, and he will find something for you to do.”
Epikrates did not brighten. “A Roman citizen will not always hire men like me.”
This surprised me, because Greeks worked for Romans all the time, even poor ones from far-flung colonies.
Epikrates didn’t speak Latin well—I noted that children of foreign parents often learned the language of Rome faster and easier than they did—but that should not deter him.
I wasn’t sure what Epikrates meant but didn’t press him.
“Gallus is different,” I said. “It does no harm to ask.”
Epikrates nodded, though not enthusiastically. From the steel in Korinna’s eyes, I guessed she’d make certain, when Epikrates told her of my offer, that he went to the Oppian Hill.
Cassia leaned to Ariston. “Please, no more theft. You not only endanger yourself, but your family, and possibly even your friends and your neighbors. They could all be put to death for your actions.”
Ariston blinked, as though he hadn’t thought of this.
Epikrates squared his shoulders. “I am not afraid of execution,” he declared. “I will face it with dignity.”
I doubted he would. The executions at today’s games would be truly horrific. Men who went bravely to their deaths were cheered, but it was understandable when they succumbed to terror.
Korinna’s scowl only deepened. Her husband might be tranquil about being executed for theft, but I could see that Korinna had no intention of any of them being dragged to their deaths. She’d do everything, her determined glare said, to prevent that from happening.
Cassia made another exchange with Korinna, then indicated that we should take our leave.
Epikrates began offering us hospitality, to share a cup of wine, but Korinna’s snapped words cut him off. Epikrates sent us a rueful smile and escorted us the short way to the door.
“Your kindness will not be forgotten,” Epikrates said. “From both of you.”
He bowed to us, which a freedman never did to a slave. But it was Saturnalia, and order was overturned during this festival. I had the feeling, though, that Epikrates would show Cassia deference no matter what her status, or his. His gratitude was true.
Ariston emerged with his father to wave us off. He was still downcast but the glint in his eyes told me he’d toon recover.
I took the pouch from Cassia before we turned from the door and made our way back down the shadowy lane.
I held the leather bag close under my cloak, not wanting it to jingle.
I imagined that every thief in Rome would somehow know I carried this amount of money, perhaps noting that my step was a little heavier leaving this house than it had been going in.
The sooner I thrust the bag at Drusus, the better.
“Back to the arena?” I asked Cassia as we emerged from the narrow staircase cut between the walls. “Or to Drusus’s home, since Nero dismissed him? I will guess that you know where his domus lays.”
“On the Oppian Hill,” Cassia answered readily. “But we should not go there. Not yet. There is much to consider first.”