Chapter 6
I slept uneasily that night, knowing that a fortune rested in the niche under our floorboards, where Cassia kept our funds. I heard Cassia restless on her pallet by the shutters, uneasy as well.
In the morning, I climbed a narrow street up the Oppian Hill, making for the large domii at the top. I had to walk through the Subura to reach it, which I did as swiftly as possible, aware that I carried more money than the people who lived here might see in a lifetime.
Fortunately, few stirred in the Subura’s lanes at the early hours, the inhabitants sleeping off a night of drink and debauchery. They did this every morning, Saturnalia or no.
The Oppian was a spur of hill directly across from the Palatine, with a marshy valley between the two. Through a gap between buildings at the top of the Oppian, I could view the sprawl of Nero’s Domus Transitoria, still under construction on the opposite hill.
Drusus dwelled in a villa with a vast garden at the summit of the Oppian Hill, not far from the home of Sextus Livius, one of the wealthiest men in Rome.
I doubted Drusus ever spoke to Livius, who was a freedman.
Livius ranked far below the patrician Drusus, no matter that Livius’s natural father had been a patrician senator himself and a military hero.
Livius had been born a slave, and that cut him out of Drusus’s circles. I don’t think Livius minded much.
The domus Cassia gave me directions to had a colonnaded line of shops on its street wall, most of which were closed for the long holiday. Only a pastry maker was open, serving passers-by sweet treats for their Saturnalia celebrations.
The entrance to Drusus’s house lay in a deep alcove that led back from the shops, a shady place for clients to wait on warm days. Clients were there now, sitting on benches that Drusus was wealthy enough to supply.
I hesitated in the alcove, while the gazes of impatient men who owed allegiance to Drusus turned to me. Men in togas, youths in cloaks, and one large man who wore a freedman’s tunic, his arms bare in defiance of the cold weather. This last watched me with a hard face and deep suspicion.
The freedman must be a bodyguard, but he stood apart from the rest of the clients, as though not wanting to reveal which one employed him.
One of the large double doors stood open for air, but there was no sign of a door slave or the lictors I’d seen with Drusus at the games. I wondered if his sour disposition alone kept his toadies out.
I passed them all and went straight to the open door.
“He’s with a woman,” one of the younger men said in some disgust as I paused on the threshold. “We’ve been waiting for hours.”
“None of your concern,” one of the two toga-clad men snapped. “He will send for you when he is ready.”
I tried to picture the soft-bellied Drusus, with his pinched-up face, lost the throes of passion and could not. I had to pity the woman.
I felt certain Drusus would see me if he learned I’d recovered his money. I stepped into the house’s atrium, which was massive, with a large rectangular space in the ceiling open to the sky. The impluvium, the pool that caught rainwater, rippled quietly beneath the skylight.
A door in the rear of the atrium slammed open, and the man I assumed was the majordomo stormed out. He scowled at me, knowing I did not belong there.
Before he could shout for servants to throw me out, I removed the pouch from my cloak and shook it slightly, so that the coins inside clinked.
“Ennius Drusus employed me to retrieve this,” I said. “He will want it.”
The majordomo halted, his surprised gaze going to the pouch. “You found what was stolen?”
“I did.” I tucked the bag back under my cloak. “I will hand it to no one but the senator.” I couldn’t take the chance that the majordomo wasn’t corrupt enough to hide the money and claim I’d never found it or even stole it myself.
The majordomo’s mouth pinched. I watched him debate whether to tell Drusus and pass the problem to him or explain to his master why he let me walk out of the house with the gold.
“Wait here,” the majordomo commanded.
He crossed the atrium to a set of large folding doors that led to the tablinum—the office of the paterfamilias—and tapped quietly on it.
“Sir,” he called softly but urgently. “It’s that gladiator.”
I heard a grunt of annoyance from beyond. Not long later, the folding door slid open, but it wasn’t Drusus who appeared on the threshold.
A dark-haired young woman in sumptuous silks and shimmering gold jewelry glided out of the doorway. She smiled at me with red-painted lips, her eyes lined with kohl.
She was quite beautiful and also sensual, smelling of spicy perfume, but not so much that it was cloying. She was a professional entertainer, I surmised, but whether dancer, musician, actress, or courtesan, I couldn’t say.
She deepened her smile when she saw my interest but wafted through the atrium to the front door without a word. The gold chains on her neck and wrists clicked softly as she floated from the house.
Drusus stood in front of a desk inside his tablinum, his feet planted apart. He wore closed shoes for the colder weather, the tight laces of them gilded.
Drusus cleared his throat. I and the majordomo, who’d also been enthralled by the woman, jerked our attention to him.
I doubted we’d interrupted them in the middle of copulation. The woman’s layered garments had been neatly in place, her hair sleek in its coiffure, nothing hastily scraped together. Drusus’s linen tunic was fastened firmly at both shoulders with gold fibulae, the fabric unwrinkled.
“She is a dancer, not that it is any of your affair,” Drusus said tightly. “She amuses me when the business of the day grows tedious.”
The woman hadn’t been dancing either, as she hadn’t been out of breath or her hair mussed from that.
However, if Drusus wanted to make his clients wait while he had a chat with a dancer, then that was his choice. His clients despised him for it, but if they needed Drusus’s support, either financially or by his influence, they’d put up with his behavior.
The majordomo bowed to his master. “The gladiator claims he has found your money.”
Drusus immediately stepped down from the raised floor of the tablinum. “Where is it? Give it to me.”
I wordlessly removed the pouch from my cloak and held it out to him.
Drusus snatched it, wrenching open the drawstrings and thrusting his hand inside, lips moving as he counted the coins.
“It is all here,” he said, shooting me a glance that held some surprise. “Where is the thief?”
No thanks, no offer of reward. I stifled my irritation.
“He got away from us.”
Drusus glared. “You are a skilled gladiator, supposedly the best in the world. How did you not catch him?”
I relayed the tale Cassia had come up with—that we’d chased the bandit out of Rome and into the hills to the west, where I’d lost his trail. I left it vague whether he’d dropped the money while he’d fled or I’d wrested it from him first.
“You could hire guards to search for him,” I suggested.
As Cassia predicted, Drusus shook his head. “Waste of time,” he muttered. “Go tell your princeps you failed.”
I noticed he said your princeps. Not our .
I waited a moment longer, giving him a chance to offer me payment, as most high-placed men would for rendering him a service.
Drusus turned his back on me, clenching the money pouch, and stepped up into the tablinum, ignoring us both. The majordomo quickly closed the folding doors, shutting me out.
“The senator thanks you for returning his money,” the majordomo said. “Go now.” He gestured to the lighted square of the open front doorway.
The majordomo wasn’t going to hand me the reward either.
As I ducked out of the house, I wondered how Drusus gained loyalty from his clients. Was he more generous to them? He obviously could afford to carry twenty aurei about with him and hire a dancer to amuse him when his duties grew too dull.
Perhaps Drusus believed Nero would reward me, or else he saw no reason to give coin to someone as lowly as a gladiator.
No matter what the case, I would have no payment today for my time and trouble.
I noted that the large freedman had gone, as had another toga-clad gentleman. Perhaps the big man had been guarding him, and the highborn man had decided not to bother waiting on Drusus’s pleasure.
I hated to return to Cassia empty-handed. She’d be disappointed in the lack of reward and also because I had little to tell her about Drusus.
Clouds had gathered while I’d been inside, and a thin spate of rain misted my skin as I emerged from the alcove. I paused in the street outside the pastry shop, the scent from the warm cakes tempting. I’d take something home for Cassia to enjoy, I decided, once I solved the mystery of Drusus.
After a few moments of pondering, while the pastry maker eyed me from behind his counter, I turned and headed up the street past Drusus’s home, making for the domus of the wealthy Sextus Livius.
I was fortunate to find Livius at home.
He came out to the atrium to greet me once the door slave had gone to inform him of my presence, one of his usual guards shadowing him.
“Leonidas,” Livius boomed. “What a welcome surprise.”
Sextus Livius was a man about ten years my senior, with a slim body, thick dark hair that curled, and dark eyes. He wore a simple tunic of thin linen and gold wristlets that could buy Cassia and I bread for a year.
Unlike Drusus with his bad-tempered impatience, Livius smiled broadly in genuine pleasure.
He gestured me to follow him through the interior of his immense house, the guard trailing us, and out to the peristyle garden. The thick walls of the surrounding house kept out the brisk December wind and drizzle, and two lit braziers warmed whatever winter air managed to penetrate the space.
A cushioned bench reposed under citrus trees now heavy with fragrant lemons. Scrolls strewn across the bench and a half-empty wine cup on the table next to it told me Livius had been reading here when I’d arrived.
“Sit, sit.” Livius swept away scrolls and snapped his fingers at a servant who lingered on the edge of the garden. This servant hurried away and returned with another cup of wine, which he filled from an elegant blue glass pitcher.
I sat gingerly on the bench, unused to cushions under my backside. Even when I entertained in domii on Rome’s hills, I was usually left standing when I wasn’t demonstrating my skills. I was only invited onto cushions when the lady of the house wanted a closer look at me.
“What brings you to the Oppian Hill?” Livius asked after I’d taken a refreshing sip of his rich wine. “I heard you opened the Saturnalian games, yesterday. I’d assumed you’d be there for the entire festival.”
“I did not go to compete,” I said, then decided I did not want to explain why I’d capitulated to Aemil’s request. “I came to this hill to visit Ennius Fabricius Drusus.”
Livius blenched. “Jove, why ? I will warn you, Leonidas, do not try to become one of his clients. Drusus is the most ungenerous man I know, as well as the most unpleasant.”
Then why was this ungenerous man gathering so much money to, as Cassia speculated, give it to another?
I glanced at the guard, who’d remained, though the servant had retreated to a discreet distance. I did not blame the guard. Livius was a wealthy man, and I was a trained killer.
“You will have to tell me in front of Junius,” Livius said, following my gaze. “He will insist on standing where he is, and I can’t possibly lift him.”
Junius did not react, remaining like a boulder in his spot.
Deciding to trust Livius with the problem, I launched into my tale, starting with the commotion at the games and Nero’s demand that I assist Drusus. I omitted the name of the boy who’d actually robbed him and finished with Cassia’s worry that Drusus was up to something.
To my relief, Livius didn’t press me for the identity of the thief, but let me finish the tale, his eyes filled with interest.
“I came to ask whether I can sit in your vestibulum for a while and keep an eye on his house,” I said. “Cassia is usually right.”
“She is indeed.” Livius’s voice held respect. “You may of course watch from here, but I have a better idea. My guards can find out much about who comes and goes at Drusus’s house, and probably already know most of his visitors. True, Junius?”
Junius solemnly nodded.
“Arrange it,” Livius told Junius. “Meanwhile, Leonidas, you will remain as my guest, and we’ll have a meal, to celebrate Saturnalia. I was about to eat alone, but it will be much more enjoyable with a friend, do you not think?”