Chapter 7
I’d dined in lavish homes on the Roman hills before, where the man or lady of the household and their guests reposed on couches around a long table in the triclinium, while servants carried out dish after dish for all to sample.
Most people believed wealthy Romans always ate in this way, but the couches and strange and exotic dishes were in truth only for lavish banquets, when the head of the household wanted to impress his guests.
By contrast, Livius’s servants brought a square table out to the garden and placed carved wooden folding stools on either side of it. The stools held thin cushions, more unaccustomed luxury for me.
The servants gave us a simple meal of bread and a savory meat stew, fresh greens in a salad, and sweet pastries formed into the shape of long-necked birds, dusted with sugar.
If the last were from the shop in front of Drusus’s house, I definitely would purchase some to take home to Cassia. They were sweet without being overwhelming, flaky and tasty.
As we leisurely finished the meal, Livius asked about what had happened in my life since we’d last spoken.
I’d done little more than work on the warehouses in the Emporium that Gnaeus Gallus was constructing for Livius himself, which were almost finished. Gallus had recently asked me to help him with plans for a series of shops at the base of this very hill.
Livius listened with interest. He owned much property in the city, often purchasing crumbling or abandoned buildings and refitting and reconstructing them.
He’d then charge a handsome rent for new tenants, though I’d discovered he was kind to those who’d lived in the buildings forever, allowing them to stay at their previous rate.
He also asked about Cassia, hoping she was well. Most people who met Cassia were taken with her, and Livius was no exception.
I realized as I answered that if Cassia did catch the eye of a man like Livius—maybe even Livius himself—she could leave our cold, hard rooms for a softer, more comfortable life.
She might either become the wealthy man’s favorite, or if he had true affection for her, he’d free her and marry her. A patrician might be ruined if he married a lowly freedwoman, but a wealthy freedman like Livius could do so without trouble.
Cassia would have a much better life with such a man than she would being stuck with a former gladiator, living hand to mouth on what I could earn.
My chest burned strangely when I mused upon this, but I knew I was right.
These troubling thoughts fled when Junius strode back into the garden and moved swiftly to our table.
“Ah.” Livius laid down his knife and hunk of bread he’d dipped into honey. “What did you find out, Junius?”
“That his servants are packing trunks so Drusus can remove himself from the city,” Junius said without preliminary. “They are going to his villa at Baiae. So said his door slave.” He named a town popular with the elite along the blue bay near Neapolis.
“Is that why he gathered the money?” Livius mused. “To take with him to his villa? Perhaps to pay someone there?”
“He’d be a fool if he did,” Junius answered. “Unless he travels with fifty armed men, someone will rob him blind, maybe even murder him, before he’s twenty paces down the Via Appia.”
“Unless he has already made the payment,” I said, rising.
“His clients all went home,” Junius said. “I didn’t see any carrying a box or bag with them. But they’d hide it, wouldn’t they?”
“What are the names of his clients?” I asked. “The big man was a bodyguard for someone. Which one?”
“If you mean that huge freedman, I’ve seen him a couple times this week. I don’t know him. Don’t want to. From what I’ve heard, he’s worked for some of the worst men in Rome.”
“Who is he working for now?” I asked.
Junius shrugged. “Not sure. Most of Drusus’s clients don’t have much money to hire a bodyguard, or else they wouldn’t trudge up to his house every day.
The two you described in togas are Verinius Marius, who has hair like a brown fringe, and Gaius Fulvias, who has thin legs but fat arms. They both owe their careers to Drusus. ”
Gaius Fulvias was the one who’d admonished the younger man for disparaging Drusus’s proclivities. Verinius Marius had vanished with the bodyguard—more interesting to me.
Junius continued. “The three younger are aediles, from old patrician families but poor ones. They hope Drusus will help them up the ladder. They’d do anything for him.”
Including take funds from Drusus to do something dire, as Cassia feared? Drusus was fleeing, which meant that dire thing was about to happen—maybe already had.
“Is there any way to stop Drusus leaving Rome?” I demanded.
Livius, who’d come to his feet beside me, shook his head. “He’s a senator, a prominent one. Unless he’s committed a crime, he’ll not be kept at the gate. Leaving the city with his own money isn’t illegal.”
Junius’s lips quirked into a little smile, one that would terrify an enemy. “We could always slow him down. A few carts in his way, a caravan lingering at the gates …”
“You can arrange that?” I asked him in surprise.
“I have ceased being amazed at what Junius and his colleagues can get up to,” Livius answered with a laugh. “I am only pleased he is loyal to me. What do you want to do, Leonidas? Stop Drusus and question him?”
Drusus would never reveal his secrets to me, no matter how much I threatened. He hadn’t been afraid of me, and he hadn’t shown any fear of Nero.
“I need to go home. Tell Cassia.”
Livius did not question me. “I will come with you. Perhaps I can be of some service.”
“You’ve already done much,” I began.
“Even so. Junius, try to keep Drusus in the city. If you cannot, then do not get yourself arrested attempting to hinder him. I have the feeling the damage, whatever it is, has already been done. Shall we go, Leonidas?”
Livius readily walked upstairs with me to our small apartment above the wineshop, leaving the guard who’d accompanied us to lean menacingly near the street door.
Cassia smiled at Livius when he entered, making my chest tighten again. She quickly poured wine for him, apologizing for its quality before Livius drank.
“I will send you more,” Livius promised, though he imbibed our wine without a qualm. “You must always tell me whenever you run out, so that I can top you up.”
Cassia made a noncommittal answer. Livius likely offered in friendship, but Cassia and I both knew that taking favors from a wealthy man had its risks.
I told Cassia all I and Junius had learned on the Oppian Hill. “The patrician called Verinius Marius had gone when the bodyguard did,” I finished. “They left while I was returning the money to Drusus, but either of them might have come back later to fetch it.”
“Yes, I think the bodyguard is significant.” Cassia shuffled through her tablets, reading the notes she’d taken since this adventure had begun.
“No matter what, we need to tell the princeps what we’ve learned.
This all may mean nothing, and Drusus might simply be leaving to renovate his villa in Baiae. But if not …”
If Drusus was paying the bodyguard to assassinate someone, maybe even Nero himself, a man he clearly hated, and we said nothing, Nero would punish us as soon as he dealt with Drusus. I doubted our benefactor, whoever he was, could do anything about it.
Cassia snapped her tablets closed and stuffed them into her bag. Livius drained his cup and set it on the table.
“I’ll send Albanus up the hill with you,” he said, naming the guard who waited at the foot of the staircase. “I won’t go. It’s always best I keep my distance from the princeps.”
He’d told me why when I’d first met him, after I’d helped his natural father, a retired senator called Priscus. Livius was only a name to Nero, but one that made him twitchy. I agreed that a confrontation between the two was in no one’s interest.
Cassia was too hurried to argue. She snatched up her good cloak and pattered down the stairs to the damp street, striding past Albanus before he could protest that he should take the lead.
I had to lengthen my stride to catch up to Cassia and heard Albanus grumbling behind us.
The misty rain ceased as we pressed through the crowded forum of Augustus, followed by the teeming Forum Romanum to the path that led up the Palatine Hill.
To my alarm, I spied the large bodyguard I’d seen at Drusus’s lingering near the main gate to Nero’s domus. The Praetorian guards who milled here as usual seemed in no way concerned about him, likely viewing him only as a servant waiting for his employer.
The big man saw me. He stilled a moment in recognition but did not approach me or betray worry that I was there.
Cassia sent me an inquiring glance, and I nodded. She pretended to ignore the large man and approached the main gate without slowing.
“Please tell Lucanus Faustinus that Cassia and Leonidas must see the princeps,” she said to the guard there, naming the majordomo who’d admitted us before. “It is urgent.”
The Praetorian stared at her stonily, not accustomed to being told what to do by a female slave.
Fortunately for us, a guard called Servius, who’d assisted us in the past, appeared at his shoulder.
“Let him in,” Servius said. “Leonidas wouldn’t come without a very good reason.” He sent me tight look, acknowledging that any sane man would avoid Nero as much as he could.
“Is he here?” I asked Servius as we hastened inside.
Servius nodded. “Entertaining himself between the games,” he said. “Come, I’ll take you in.”
We followed Servius through the maze of the house under construction, across black-and-white mosaics into an open square garden that held a fountain as large as Livius’s atrium. From there, the domus opened out in all directions. Nero could be lurking in any of its corners.
The majordomo, Faustinus, a slim man with a shaved head, rustled to us from one of the arched openings that encircled the garden.