Past Crimes: A Compendium of Historical Mysteries

by Jennifer Ashley

  But if he didn’t let go of Cassia, I’d break his neck and dump his body into the Tiber.

  “He must have been awful,” Cassia said to Gaius. “We heard that he ill-used you. And if his fraud were discovered, it would go badly for you and your mother.”

  “I care nothing for that!” Gaius cried, his voice rising again. “I could take his beatings. His dishonesty at least made us money. I killed him because he touched her. He is supposed to protect her, and he did the worst thing a man could do to a woman—especially his sister. And still she loved him.”

  Cassia’s brief intake of breath sounded loud in the stillness. “Oh, Gaius, no. I’m so sorry.”

  He had a knife to her throat, nothing to keep him from slicing her as he had his uncle, and Cassia felt sorry for him.

  Gaius had just confirmed my suspicions that Selenius had been more than simply a brute and a trickster. I remembered how the young man in the baths had told me Selenius’s sister had been violated by one of Selenius’s friends. That was likely what the rumor had become when the gossip spread from the house. The truth, I realized now, was more terrible than that.

  I recalled Cassia’s mention of her visit to Gaius and his mother Selenia, how upset Selenia had been at her brother’s death. Perhaps not because she’d loved her brother and he’d been murdered, but because she’d realized her son killed him, and she knew why.

  Gaius had nearly broken into tears when he’d told us Selenius been a father to him. A father who had done such a horrible thing to his mother.

  “He raped her,” I said, the blatant word ugly. “You couldn’t stop him.”

  Tears ran down Gaius’s face. “He said it was her duty to be with him. He dishonored her and violated her—his own sister. She wouldn’t let me accuse him, wouldn’t let me make him pay for what he’d done. Wouldn’t let me bring shame on the family.” Gaius hiccupped air. “That day … that morning … I was doing his bidding as usual. He and my mother had argued before we’d come, and he’d beaten her to the floor. While we were here, he began to taunt me. Said he’d had whores far better than my mother, that she was weak and stupid and had born a weak and stupid son. He’d laid his knife on the counter. No one was outside. I grabbed it—I don’t know what I meant to do. But then I was swinging it at his throat. It went right through.” Gaius gulped and the knife came too close to nicking Cassia’s skin. “I had to do it. I had to avenge her.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling sick. “I would have done the same. But Cassia has not harmed you. Let her go, or you will die. Painfully. I won’t let you fight back, and so you’ll have no honor, and I’ll throw away your body. Your mother will always wonder what happened to you.”

  Cassia’s alarm grew, not for herself but for me. But I couldn’t halt my tongue. If young Gaius hurt Cassia, I’d pull off his arms and roll his torso along to an opening of the sewers, flushing him away with the rest of Rome’s refuse.

  Gaius sobbed now, clinging to Cassia as though loath to release her. His eyes closed tightly with his tears, and he turned his head.

  Two steps took me to him. One squeeze of my fist broke the hand that held the knife. Gaius screamed, trying to fight, but too late.

  I had him on the ground, his arm twisted behind him, my foot on his skinny thighs. I held the iron pry bar to his throat.

  “A gladiator stabs, he doesn’t slice,” I said in a harsh voice. “More likely to make a hit, and death is quicker.”

  Gaius continued to wail and sob. Cassia picked up the knife, holding it loosely in one hand, as I’d taught her, but she had to brace herself on the wall with the other, her breath ragged.

  I lifted the pry bar, drew back my foot, and kicked Gaius in the head. He went limp, and mercifully, the sounds pouring from his mouth ceased.

  I waited in Selenius’s closed shop, Gaius slumped under the counter where his uncle had died, while Cassia went to fetch his mother.

  At Cassia’s insistence, I relinquished the bloody clothes and knife to her. What she’d do with them, I didn’t know, and I did not ask.

  I knew she was canny enough not to walk into Selenia’s house and announce we’d captured her son, so I did not worry about her going by herself on her errand. She’d persuade Gaius’s mother to come, and come alone.

  I sat on the floor, though a perfectly good stool reposed near the cupboard. I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to let the silence of the place calm me.

  Gaius was tied with strips torn from his bloody tunic—even if he woke, he’d not be attacking me. We’d searched him for more weapons, but he’d had none.

  He’d likely been returning at this quiet hour, as we had, to retrieve the tunic and knife from under the stone. Yesterday, this shop had been alive with cohorts, the other shopkeepers, and gawpers. Today would have been his first chance to return unnoticed. We’d been right to search the tunnels as soon as we could.

  Gaius had likely kept a change of clothing here, in the cupboard perhaps, in case his uncle had him work through the night, or perhaps he simply didn’t like wearing anything dirty.

  I didn’t know what would become of Gaius and his mother, and I was no longer interested. I could prove now that I didn’t kill Selenius, and that Balbus hadn’t either, but that wasn’t what relieved me.

  I’d been imagining, awake and asleep, the child Sergius, having been frightened by Selenius, slashing out with the knife and killing the man. Or creeping up on him and doing the same.

  Sergius was the small, innocent boy I’d been before life had made me otherwise. I’d later been labeled a killer, and sent to the games where I could murder for other people’s entertainment.

  No more killing, I’d vowed the day I’d gained my freedom and the rudis, the wooden sword that symbolized it. And yet, murder followed me.

  I couldn’t keep myself from death. But I could save Sergius from it, and Cassia.

  Cassia arrived with Selenia in tow. Only Cassia and Selenia entered the shop, so Cassia must have persuaded her to leave the litter bearers and maids outside in the street. She couldn’t have stopped Selenia from bringing servants altogether—a Roman matron did not hurry through the streets on foot and alone.

  I kept my eyes closed and the cold wall behind me as Selenia cried out upon seeing her son. Cassia explained to Selenia what had happened, and Selenia broke down, Cassia comforting her.

  They could leave Rome, Cassia said. “No one will question that you wanted to go far from the place of your brother’s death,” she went on, her voice soothing. “Take your son and go. We will say nothing.”

  “He didn’t mean to be cruel,” Selenia replied brokenly. I wondered whether she meant her son or her brother. “Yes, I’ll take Gaius far away.” She drew a sobbing breath. “I have your word?”

  “You have our word,” Cassia reassured her.

  The word of a slave and a gladiator should count for nothing. We weren’t people to most. I was marginally a person now that I’d been freed, but only just.

  But Cassia had a way with her. I opened my eyes a crack to see the matron swathed in her silks from the East hugging Cassia and crying.

  I rose at long last, lifted the unconscious Gaius over my shoulder, and trudged through the deserted shops to the dark street. I loaded him into Selenia’s litter then helped her in behind him. It was Cassia who gave the order for the litter bearers to start down the street, the maids trotting along after it.

  I took Cassia’s hand and led her home.

  Two days later, we left Rome and went along the Via Appia to the Via Latina. Cassia was perched on a donkey, Sergius’s precious cup wrapped in a bundle before her.

  I led the donkey—the beast had been my idea, although Cassia had insisted she’d be able to walk the five miles to Marcella’s farm. I knew she couldn’t and pointed out that she’d pay for her pride by having to travel the last part of the distance slung over my shoulder. That argument had convinced Cassia to pay the few coins for the donkey.

  We shar
ed a loaf of Quintus’s bread as we went along, Cassia chattering to me. She could find enough to talk about to fill a five-mile journey and have plenty left over.

  She told me that Selenia and Gaius had left the city early this morning, heading for a house Selenia had inherited in the north, near Tuscana. Cassia had heard this from servants of Selenia’s household—the family would sell the business and turn to growing wine or some such thing.

  Cassia hadn’t left our apartment since we’d returned from sending Gaius and Selenia home, but Cassia, through the vast number of acquaintances she’d made since coming to me, could discover what happened at the far end of town without stirring a step.

  Cassia had found out—through these same connections—how I’d had to pay for my dinner at the tavern in the Pallacinae. She’d not said so directly, but she’d made a show of putting extra coins in my purse, saying I’d not be caught without them again. Other than that, she never mentioned the matter.

  Now Cassia turned her face to the sun, what bit of it she let show from behind her draped wrap. “How lovely to be in the open air again.” She let out a happy breath. “There’s no place more beautiful than Campania, Leonidas. We’ll go there sometime.”

  I only made a neutral noise. Traveling cost money, and who knew how far our benefactor would let us out of his sight?

  For now, it was enough that we could breathe air that held none of the smoke and stenches of the city, that the sun shone warm and the breeze was cool. The men in Rome would hunt a foreign slave for a murder and then give up when they couldn’t find Balbus, safe in his disguise in the ludus. Selenius’s shop would be taken over by another money-changer, and the man’s death would be forgotten.

  We’d give Sergius back his cup with my name on it, eat Marcella’s hearty food, and curl up for the night in the warmth of her barn. Then back to Rome to exist a while longer.

  “You’ll have to take another job when we return,” Cassia said around a bite of bread. “A loaf a day is all very well, but that will end in time, and our coffers are fearsomely low.”

  “They always are,” I muttered.

  Cassia pretended not to hear me. “Perhaps you could guard someone all the way to Neapolis,” she said. “It’s lovely there, across the bay from Herculaneum. Beauty you’ve never seen, Leonidas.”

  “I have seen it,” I answered. “I was hired out for games there, years ago.”

  “Oh.” She sounded a bit disappointed, then brightened. “Then you would see it again, but this time we could wander the streets and eat in the best taverns, and climb the hills for the view. Delightful.”

  “Delightful,” I repeated. “When I look for this job, I’ll make sure the employer knows it must be delightful.”

  “You are making fun of me, Leonidas.”

  “Yes.” I kept my face straight. “Or we can return to Rome, and I can sleep.” I was already tired, longing to reach Marcella’s where I could lie on straw and close my eyes. Cassia and Marcella would talk—and talk—and I’d lie back and let their voices drift over me.

  “You are always sleeping, Leonidas,” Cassia said without rancor. “One day, you will have to wake up.”

  “One day, I will,” I said.

  “I have your word?”

  “You do.” I might be infamis, but I honored my promises, and Cassia knew it.

  “That’s all right then.” Cassia turned her face to the road.

  Before long, she started to hum, a clear tune she liked. In another few yards, she was softly singing.

  The words flowed around me to be caught by the breeze and rise into the clear blue sky.

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of the new Leonidas the Gladiator Mysteries.

  As you might guess, while this is the first offering in the series, it will not be Book One. The first novel will introduce Leonidas and Cassia and show how they came to know and depend on each other. I’ll go into more detail about the characters’ backgrounds, the mysterious benefactor, and how Leonidas begins to solve crimes.

  I don’t know at the moment when that book will be finished—please check my website: www.gardnermysteries.com or sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/5n7rz to be notified when it is ready for pre-order and released.

  If a vegetarian gladiator surprises you, archaeologists have discovered, by studying the bones of gladiators and other athletes, that their diet consisted mostly of vegetables, with a little starch, like barley and beans, to supplement it. Gladiators were fed the best foods available, as the more robust a man was, the better he performed and the more money could be made from him. Gladiators also had regular massages after their training and the best physicians to look after them.

  I will explore more about the gladiators’ world and more of Rome in the time of Nero in the novels.

  When picturing the Rome of Nero, we have to erase from the city much of what we think of as “Roman” (e.g., the Coliseum, Trajan’s column, the Pantheon as we see it today, and more)—these were great building projects of the later first and early second centuries AD (Hadrian rebuilt Agrippa’s Pantheon, though he left Agrippa’s name on the portico). We must imagine Rome before the fire of AD 64, when warrens of streets were wrapped with wooden and stone buildings.

  Among my research materials for this era, I found mapping projects of early first-century Rome, which helped me follow Leonidas about the streets, and a fascinating digital reconstruction of Nero’s Domus Aurea (Golden House), which did not exist at the time of this story, but will come into future novels.

  Again, I hope you enjoyed a look into Leonidas’s world. More to come!

  All my best,

  Ashley Gardner

  The Necklace Affair

  Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries by Ashley Gardner

  Chapter 1

  On an evening in late March 1817, I climbed to the third floor of Lucius Grenville’s Grosvenor Street house in search of peace, and found a lady weeping instead.

  In the rooms below me, Grenville’s latest revelry tinkled and grated, Grenville celebrating recovery from a near-fatal injury. The entire haut ton had turned up tonight, Lucius Grenville being the darling of society, the dandy all other dandies aspired to be. The famous Brummell had fled to the Continent, Alvanley grew stout, but Grenville reigned supreme. He was an epicure who knew how to avoid excess, a sensualist who could resist the temptations of sloth and lechery.

  I’d enjoyed speaking to a few of my friends below, but the transparent way Grenville’s sycophants tried to exploit my acquaintance with him soon grated on my patience. I decided to sit in Grenville’s private room and read until the festivities died down.

  I used my walking stick and the balustrade, hand-carved by an Italian cabinetmaker, to leverage myself up the stairs. My leg injury, given to me by French soldiers during the Peninsular War, did not affect me so much tonight as did the near gallon of port I had drunk. I could never afford what Grenville had in his cellars, so when he invited me to partake, I took enough to last.

  Therefore, I was well past foxed when I at last emerged onto the third floor and sought the peace of Grenville’s sitting room.

  I found the lady in it, weeping.

  She sat squarely under the scarlet tent that hung in the corner of the room, a souvenir from Grenville’s travels in the east. The entire room was a monument to his journeys—ivory animals from the Indies reposed next to golden masks from Egypt, rocks bearing the imprint of ancient American animals held pride of place near hieroglyphic tablets from Persia.

  The lady might have been pretty once, but too many years of rich food, late mornings, and childbirth had etched their memories onto her face and body. Her large bosom, stuffed into a satin bodice and reinforced with bands of lace, quivered with her misery.

  I took two steps into the room, checked myself, and turned to go.

  “Captain Lacey?”

  I halted, bowed, and admitted to be he. I had no memory of who she was.r />
  The woman swiped at her wet cheeks with a handkerchief so tiny she might as well not have bothered. “May I make so bold as to speak to you? Mr. Grenville said you might assist me.”

  Had he, indeed? Grenville was apt to volunteer my services, as I’d been of some use in solving problems that ran from innocuous misunderstandings all the way to violent murders.

  I ought to have walked away then and there and not let myself be drawn into the whole sordid business. I was tired and quite drunk and had no reason to believe that I could help this sorrowful lady.

  But her red-rimmed eyes were so pleading, her wretchedness so true, that I found myself giving her another bow and telling her to proceed.

  “It is my maid, you see.”

  I braced myself for an outpouring of domestic troubles. My head started to pound, and I sank into the nearest comfortable chair.

  “She is going to be hanged,” the lady announced.

  Chapter 2

  Her blunt statement swept the fog from my brain. I sat up straight as several facts clicked into place.

  “You are Lady Clifford,” I said.

  She nodded, dejected.

  “I read of it in the newspaper this morning,” I said. “Your maid has been accused of stealing a diamond necklace worth several thousand pounds.” The maid was even now awaiting examination by the Bow Street magistrate.

  Lady Clifford sat forward and clasped her doughy hands. “She did not take it, Captain. That horrible Bow Street Runner said so, but I know Waters would never have done such a thing. She’s been with me for years. Why should she?”

  I could think of a number of reasons why Waters should. Perhaps she saw the necklace as her means of escaping a life of servitude. Perhaps she had a lover who’d convinced her to steal the necklace for him. Perhaps she bore a secret hatred for her employer and had at last found a way to exact revenge.