Past Crimes: A Compendium of Historical Mysteries

by Jennifer Ashley

  I returned to Selenius’s stall, the boy obediently waiting. Terrified, he still followed the orders of Leonidas, champion of the games.

  I stepped carefully around the pool of blood, the stink of it making my vision blur. I sucked in deep breaths through my mouth, willing my thoughts to remain in the present, and skirted the blood to reach the boy.

  “How did you get here?” I demanded.

  He pointed to the black opening of the door behind him. I couldn’t see where it went but a noisome smell leeched from the shadows.

  I glanced at the man on the floor—I assumed he was Selenius, though I’d never met him. The blood came not from many injuries but from the large one across his throat. The vessels in his neck had been severed, and blood had poured forth to kill him quickly.

  Whoever had done this had known exactly where to cut. It was the sort of execution a soldier would know how to perform—or a gladiator.

  Very little frightened me anymore, but the thought of being tried for another murder, found guilty, and tossed back into the arena filled me with slow dread. Quintus the baker had sent me here—had he known Selenius lay dead and hoped I’d be taken for the crime?

  I thought of Quintus’s polished face and ingenuous dark eyes, which I swore had no guile in them, apart from avoiding payment of my fee. He might be as ignorant of this death as I’d been.

  No matter what, we couldn’t linger. The boy had stooped to the fragments of his precious cup. I pushed his hands away, not wanting him to cut himself on the shards, but I gathered every single one of them. Put together, they had my name on them, and I wanted no connection in anyone’s mind between dead Selenius and Leonidas the Gladiator.

  I shoved the fragments into the pouch at my belt and leaned down to lift the boy. Before I could, he grabbed one more piece from the floor, and then I hefted him into my arms.

  He weighed next to nothing, bones in a threadbare tunic.

  I decided not to ask where he lived. If I carried him home, people would remember—I could not move a step in this city without it being remarked upon.

  It would be the talk of every supper for days to come if I were seen walking about the city with a small boy under my arm. I couldn’t hide him under a convenient toga, because ex-gladiators, freedmen who were barely human, didn’t wear them.

  “Where does that lead?” I pointed through the doorway behind him.

  “Down,” was the helpful reply.

  He’d come in here, so he must be able to get out. I ducked with him through the doorway to find a brick-lined passage that soon grew very dark. I smelled waste, human and animal, which meant this tunnel probably went to a maintenance hatch to the sewers. Rome was pockmarked with shafts that led to the considerable network of tunnels and sewers that crawled to every corner of Rome.

  The boy was much smaller than I was—I hoped he didn’t expect me to slither through tiny orifices in the bowels of Rome. It would be a stupid death for me to get stuck in an opening with the city’s waste flushing through it to drown me.

  I set the lad on his feet but kept hold of his hand. “Show me,” I said as I closed the door behind us.

  He started off at a rapid pace, dragging me down low-ceilinged tunnels, my skin scraping on the walls as I staggered along.

  We twisted and eventually plunged downward, the stone floor sloping inward from the walls, but not to the sewers as I’d feared. The last passage ended in a rough set of steps that led down to a wooden door.

  I carefully opened this door and peered out.

  It took me a moment to gain my bearings. We were at the base of the Esquiline Hill, near the area called the Figlinae, where potters had their factories. The street before me was lined with shops, this obscure narrow door obviously for maintenance purposes. People thronged here as they did everywhere, barely noticing us as we emerged from a battered door in a wall of shops and warehouses to blend in with them.

  A short walk took us to the fountain of Orpheus at a broad crossroads, where a marble Orpheus tried to tame stone animals with his lyre. We turned here and journeyed back through the Subura to the Forum Augusti, where I lost hold of the boy’s hand in the crush of people.

  In three steps I caught up to him and lifted him into my arms. The boy never struggled or cried out, didn’t protest or question. He simply rode against my chest, sanguine that his hero Leonidas held him.

  I hefted him around the corner toward the wine shop, and then took the wooden stairs two at a time, to burst through the door into our apartment.

  Cassia looked up from the tablets and scrolls that surrounded her, her pen falling from her fingers in surprise. She leapt to her feet, one scroll rolling up on itself and spattering ink, as I lowered the boy to his feet and shut the door.

  “This is Cassia,” I said to the boy. “She’ll take care of you.”

  I had the pleasure of seeing Cassia, who always knew what to say at every occasion, at a loss for words. She opened her mouth, switched her stare to the lad, closed her mouth, and looked back at me.

  “Who—?”

  “I don’t know,” I cut her off. “I found him. Or, he found me. The money-changer is dead—Quintus sent me to collect a debt from him, but he’s dead. Someone killed him.”

  I spit out the explanation as swiftly as possible, my entire body willing me to walk across the room and collapse upon my bed. I’d sleep and let Cassia sort it all out. When she’d finished, she’d wake me and tell me what to do.

  Her mouth hung open again, showing even white teeth against her red tongue. She moved her gaze to the boy, who had put his fingers to his lower lip and watched her apprehensively.

  “Killed?” she repeated in a faint voice.

  “Murdered, butchered, his throat sliced. Professional.” I moved my arm as though I cut across a man’s throat. “I came here. I told no one.”

  As I spoke, I untied my pouch from my belt and shook the fragments of terra cotta onto the table. Cassia touched them, mystified.

  “Give me the piece you picked up,” I said to the boy. “Cassia can stick this together for you again.”

  Cassia turned over the shard that had Leonidas scratched on it, and her lips formed an O.

  The boy opened his fist and dropped what he held onto the table. It wasn’t a fragment, or even pottery, but a small roll of papyrus.

  Cassia snatched it up and smoothed it out, her eyes widening as she studied the spidery writing within. She sat down, her interest caught, her entire body growing animated as it did when something intrigued her.

  “Where did he find this?” she asked without looking up.

  “At Selenius’s shop,” I said. “I thought he’d picked up another piece of the cup.”

  “No.” Cassia turned the paper around and held it up to me as though I’d be astonished by it. Then she seemed to remember I couldn’t read a word and laid it back down. “It’s a voucher. For a traveling patron to change for Roman coin.”

  I didn’t respond. When Cassia began speaking like a scribe I gave up following her. I crouched down by the boy who was torn between bewilderment and fascination.

  “What’s your name, lad?”

  The boy took his fingers out of his mouth. “Sergius.”

  I waited, but he said nothing more. I didn’t know if that was his praenomen or his family or clan name. He might have had no other if he was a boy from the streets. What if he was from a brothel?

  My chest burned. I’d gone to brothels ever since I’d figured out what my wick was for, and as a gladiator I’d been a welcome guest—my lanista paid for the best. I favored women only, fully grown ones, that is, but there were plenty of Romans who indulged in young men; for some, the younger the better.

  Lads and girls Sergius’s age would have no choice but to fulfill the indulgence. They weren’t old enough to seek a living elsewhere, and likely their parents had sold them to the brothels when they couldn’t afford to feed them.

  The children in these places were hollow-eyed and broken, kn
owing they could not protest or stop anything the customers wanted to do to them. I’d noticed the relief on their faces whenever I walked past them for the women who actually had breasts and hips.

  I’d not been able to do a damn thing to help them. I had been owned myself at the time, and now I barely had enough to keep me and Cassia fed. I hadn’t been back to the brothels in a long time.

  But I’d sacrifice to any god willing to listen to keep this little lad away from them—a boy whose only delight was a cheap cup with my name on it.

  “Do you have a family?” I asked him.

  Sergius considered this and then shook his head.

  “Where do you live then?”

  “With Alba.”

  Since any number of women in the empire could be called Alba, this didn’t help much.

  “Is she your mother?”

  A shake of his head, a faint distaste that I’d even think so.

  “Mistress of a brothel?” I asked.

  A nod. That clinched the matter. He’d not be returning to Alba.

  “Did she send you on an errand today?” I continued.

  Another nod.

  “And what was this errand?”

  “Fish sauce. Then I saw you.”

  Cassia had lifted her head to listen, her elbows on the table as she held the small piece of papyrus between her fingers.

  “And you followed me,” I said. “After I left the baker’s.”

  Sergius gave me a single nod. “Took a shortcut.”

  Interesting. “How did you know where I was going?”

  “I heard Quintus tell you to go to Selenius. I ran to get there first.”

  “And what did you see?”

  Horror crept into his eyes. “Saw him dead.”

  “That was Selenius, was it?”

  Sergius nodded vigorously. “Didn’t like him. Mean. Ugly. Stank.”

  He hadn’t smelled that good dead either. “You knew him?”

  “Saw him about when I went to the market for Alba. He had his slave kick me if I came too close to his bench. Once he knocked me down.”

  My anger at Selenius bloomed, no matter the man was dead.

  The small slip of papyrus fluttered between Cassia’s fingers, distracting me. I eyed it in irritation. “What is that? Explain in words I will understand.”

  Cassia laid down the paper and smoothed it out, taking on the patient look she did whenever she had to teach me something.

  “When a man from the outreaches of the empire decides to travel to the city of Rome, he will need money. But it is dangerous to walk the roads with a box full of coins if one does not have armed bodyguards every step of the way. Therefore, a man can go to a merchant or shipping agent who is part of a business in Rome, pay a certain amount of money, and obtain a voucher. When he reaches Rome, he takes the voucher to a shipping agent of the same company, who will then give him the amount he paid in. A small fee is involved, of course, but this way, a man can travel and not risk being robbed of all he has in the world.”

  A clever arrangement—if the man didn’t lose his voucher and if he could be reasonably certain he’d get his money back at the other end.

  “Selenius wasn’t a shipping agent,” I pointed out.

  “Some money-changers honor the vouchers,” Cassia said. “If they have an arrangement with the shipping company. Money-changers have plenty of coins, don’t they?”

  “All right then, this Selenius was a man travelers visited to collect on their vouchers,” I said, making certain I’d followed her explanation. “What of it?”

  Even ordinary transactions excited Cassia’s heart, but this did not explain her elation over the slip of paper.

  “This voucher is a bit different.” Cassia held it up again, smiling hugely. “This one is a forgery.”

  Chapter 3

  I stared at the paper she waved but was no more enlightened than before.

  “How do you know that?”

  Cassia laid the sheet neatly on the table next to the broken cup. “When I was in the household of Glaucia Rufina, I traveled extensively with her. It was my task to go to the shipping agents and money-changers and pay in and take out. I kept track of all the finances.” She trailed off.

  She meant before Glaucia Rufina’s husband had laid his hands on Cassia, and Cassia, once a trusted slave with many privileges, found herself banished.

  Now she kept accounts for me. My finances were a fly to the elephant of those of a lady like Glaucia Rufina, but Cassia kept them with the same efficiency. She never complained about the difference in amount except when there wasn’t enough to feed us or pay the rent. I’d realized that Cassia liked figures, any figures, didn’t matter how large or small. As long as she had numbers to play with, she was content.

  “I’ve handled many of these, some from this very man Gaius Selenius,” Cassia said. “This is neatly done. Selenius decorates his with a symbol derived from his mark, so that all will know it’s his. There has been an attempt to copy the mark, but it’s not quite right. As I say, though, very neatly done. Most people would be fooled.” She sounded admiring.

  “Why kill him for it?”

  Cassia shrugged. “It might have nothing to do with his death. What did you do when you found him? Did you tell anyone?”

  “No.” I glanced at Sergius, who had lost interest in the conversation and was looking about the apartment in curiosity.

  Cassia’s eyes widened as she followed my gaze. “You don’t think …?” She swallowed, turning back to me in consternation. “You said you thought it was professional.”

  “I don’t know.” I balled my fists. “Might have been professional. Or luck.”

  A frightened person could slice a knife across another’s neck and kill him without much effort. The human body was a fragile thing. Trainers, as well as the physicians who’d patched us up, had showed us every single vulnerable point on a man’s body and how to stab them to bring about his swift end.

  Cassia’s dark eyes began to sparkle as they did when she was interested in a thing. I watched her run through scenarios and calculate their likelihood with lightning rapidity. I could do such a thing when it came to a fight, although it was best to let my training take over and not think very hard. Cassia could evaluate a dozen problems from what to eat for breakfast to who might have murdered a money-changer in the time most people could think to wonder what the weather was like.

  “You must report it,” Cassia said abruptly. “The baker knows you went to Selenius. He sent you. Did others see you near Selenius’s shop?”

  I told her about the few people who’d been left in the macellum, including the two Gauls who’d been finishing their business with the garum vendor.

  “When someone finds Selenius dead, they will remember Leonidas the Gladiator walking in and then vanishing.” Cassia’s cheeks lost color, and she twisted her fingers together as she did when she was particularly worried.

  “Leonidas, who knows how to kill,” I finished for her. This was not the first time someone had connected me, a professional murderer, with a death. “The baker could have known Selenius was dead—he sent me to discover him and to be taken for the murder, so he wouldn’t have to pay our be-damned fee.” I paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your money, Cassia. I should have shaken it out of him.”

  “Never mind about the money.” Cassia sprang up and came to my side. She didn’t touch me but she stood close enough that I felt the warmth of her stola. “You cannot be accused of this crime. You did not commit it.”

  I was stunned by two things: First, Cassia saying the words Never mind about the money. The second was her stout belief that I had not killed the man. She could not possibly know whether I had gone into the deserted shop of Gaius Selenius, taken all his money, and slit his throat. She hadn’t been there, couldn’t have seen.

  But she believed in me, had from the day she’d met me.

  That is, from the moment she’d realized I wouldn’t set upon her, ravish her, beat
her, and throw her into a corner as she’d fully expected. I’d only asked her what she wanted for dinner.

  “If they come for me,” I said slowly. “How do I prove I did not kill him?”

  Cassia took a step back and surveyed me with calm assessment. “You haven’t a drop of blood on you. That is a wine stain.” She pointed at the purplish splash on the side of my tunic. “You don’t even have blood on your shoes—you must have stepped carefully.”

  I nodded. I had, not wanting to touch what had poured from Selenius’s throat.

  “Was the blood liquid?” Cassia asked. “Still flowing? Or dried?”

  I had a good memory for details, which Cassia had once told me she admired. This surprised me, as I hadn’t thought it any sort of special trick. She’d responded that she wrote everything down because she didn’t have a good memory. I’d had to think on that for a while.

  I brought to mind Selenius’s wide-open eyes, the blackening gash on his pale neck, the red pool of blood. “Somewhere in between. No longer flowing. Patches shining here and there. Selenius’s face was gray.”

  “Which means he died some time before you arrived. Not a long time, or the blood would be completely dried. It would have helped if you’d touched his body and could tell me whether it was cold or not, but no matter. How long did it take you to reach the shop from the baker’s?”

  I had little idea of time other than morning, noon, and evening. I could barely make out a sundial, and there hadn’t been one conveniently along my route.

  “I walked to the baker’s from here,” I said. “I stopped when Sergius showed me his cup, and then I reached Quintus. Spoke to him for only a few moments. Walked straight from there to Selenius’s shop on the Clivus Suburanus, not long before the fountain of Orpheus.”

  Cassia nodded as she no doubt calculated exactly how many strides I’d taken and how soon that had put me at the macellum. She was very good at such reckonings. I’d come to believe she could tell the legions exactly how far they could march every day on the supplies they had and still have energy for battle.

  Cassia moved to the table and lifted one of her many wax tablets. “You left here at the beginning of the fifth hour,” she said. “I’d say it took you about a quarter of an hour from the baker’s to Selenius’s.” She marked a note. “From the state of his blood, Selenius might have been killed a half hour to an hour before you arrived. That can save you, if a competent physician examines the body and Quintus will agree you were talking to him at the time we say. As you had no notion who Selenius was before Quintus mentioned him, there was no reason for you to kill him before you visited the baker.” She sank to her stool as she made her notes, then she tapped the stylus to her lips. “This would clear Quintus as well. He was putting bread in the oven as you arrived, you say, and that’s a tricky business. The dough has to rise to a certain point but no further or it’s ruined. He’d have to be there to shovel it into the oven at the crucial moment.”