Past Crimes

by Ashley Gardner

  Cassia sent me a smile of triumph. “Only because that man does not know how to answer.” She fetched her palla and wrapped it around her body like a modest matron, and followed me out.

  Chapter 9

  We walked through Rome at its busiest hour to reach the macellum. Cassia kept a few steps behind me, as a slave should, but the streets were so crammed, we wouldn’t have been able to travel side by side in any case.

  We had to step out of the way several times for litters borne by Gauls, no doubt chosen for their huge musculature. Inside the litter would be a matron or her eldest daughter, perfumed and bejeweled, out to visit a friend, or making a journey to a temple to petition a god or goddess for whatever matrons and daughters petitioned them for.

  Lictors—men who accompanied patricians and acted as bodyguards, messengers, and announcers—pushed us aside at one point. The man they protected, who was swathed in a toga with a narrow purple stripe, swaggered by, chatting with another purple-striped man, senators on their way to pretend to govern Rome.

  We had an emperor who’d decided he could do what he liked, when he liked, with whom he liked, and the senators could only discuss how to keep themselves and their interests safe from him. They were powerless, and Nero knew it.

  That did not take the arrogance out of the men who walked by in their bubble of protection, or from the lictors who shoved us bodily out of the way. They carried bundles of staves, fasces, that symbolized the time when these highborn men could have their guards beat anyone they liked. The fact that the reeds were symbolic did not stop the lictors from using them for their original purpose if they felt peevish.

  While I noticed the usual stares at me as I moved along, a half head to a head taller than most Roman men, we were not accosted. The streets were so crowded I doubted anyone could get close to me to arrest me for Selenius’s murder if they wanted to, and if they did, they might cause a riot.

  I led Cassia through the Subura, which was full of humanity—from the dregs who lived in miniscule apartments to wealthy men moving from their villas at the tops of the hills to the Forum Romanum, or to baths, temples, and everything in between. I could understand why Sergius preferred to travel via the tunnels that ran beneath the streets, as unsavory as they were. There, at least, it was quiet and not crowded.

  We turned into the macellum, which was lively this morning. Vendors sold everything from produce and live chickens to cloth, carpets, lamps, beans, and cheap jewelry. Romans and travelers from all over the empire came to the market, many to use the money-changers who stood by their benches to switch the currency of far-off cities for Roman coin. On the fringes of the shops were cutpurses and thieves, waiting to relieve these foreigners of their gains.

  Shopkeepers and their clients were too busy to gawp at a former gladiator striding in, his modest slave behind him with her basket. We moved without hindrance to the interior shops of the macellum, the sun shining brightly into its atrium.

  Boards were in place over the counter of Selenius’s shop, but I spied movement within the open door. I ducked inside, Cassia at my heels, to find a young man bent over a cupboard, a flickering oil lamp lighting the gloom. A male slave, middle-aged with a surly face and gnarled hands, swept the floor.

  The young man looked irritably over his shoulder when he heard us enter, then he jerked upright and gaped at me.

  Before I could speak, he saw Cassia. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, losing his worry. “The medicus’s assistant.” He must have assumed she belonged to Marcianus. “What do you want?” he asked as he returned to rifling the cupboard.

  Cassia stepped in front of me. She kept her voice quiet and demure, her head bowed, showing the expected deference to the young man I gathered was Selenius’s nephew and adopted son. She was good at playing her part.

  “This is Leonidas, sir,” she said. “He found your uncle.”

  Gaius Selenius the Younger jerked around again. He had a jutting chin, short, flyaway hair, and small eyes. He looked much like the older Selenius, but with youthful vigor.

  “Oh,” Gaius said. “The gladiator.” He concluded his assessment of me dubiously. “I’ve never seen you fight. I’m too busy to go to the games.”

  Most of Rome shut down during games, as they were public spectacles, often held in conjunction with religious celebrations, like Saturnalia. I wondered if his uncle or mother had kept him from going or if young Gaius was squeamish.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “My mother is expecting me home. I am here to fetch my uncle’s records.”

  “Leonidas offers his condolences,” Cassia extemporized. “It is sad to lose one of the family. Your mother said you were very close?”

  Gaius shrugged. “My mother loved him. He was her younger brother. I found him demanding and strict, but he raised me when my father died. He became a father in truth …”

  The lad broke off, mouth twisting, eyes filling with tears. Cassia moved to stand next to him without touching him as she radiated sympathy.

  Gaius cleared his throat. “I’m the head of the household now.” The thought obviously terrified him. “My uncle shall have a grand funeral. And I will take over his business.” More trepidation.

  Cassia smiled encouragingly. “I am certain he would be honored.”

  Gaius didn’t look so certain, but he accepted Cassia’s polite concern.

  The room had been cleaned of blood, though I could see where it had seeped into cracks in the floor. The wall where Selenius had lain had been scrubbed, the patch he’d leaned against now a bit whiter than the painted brick around it.

  I studied the door to the tunnels. Cassia, catching my gaze, pointed at it.

  “What is there?” she asked Gaius, as though curious.

  Gaius glanced at the door but turned away, indifferent. “Don’t know. Uncle never opened it.”

  “Maintenance tunnels to sewers,” the slave with the broom volunteered. “Old part of Rome coming up to meet the new.”

  Gaius wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Have it sealed up.”

  The slave leaned on his broom, as though happy of the excuse to stop. “Costs. ’Swhy the master never did it.”

  “Yes, well,” Gaius said impatiently. “We’ll see the state of his finances, and if there’s money, we’ll seal it up. I don’t want the smell coming in here.”

  “Deep part’s too far down to bring bad air here,” the slave went on.

  Gaius scowled at him. He obviously wasn’t having an easy time convincing his uncle’s slaves he was in charge now. Some slaves were freed on their master’s deaths, but not all, and some remained as freedmen doing the exact same jobs they had before, suffering the exact same blows when their masters grew irritated with them.

  “Come,” I said to Cassia, a slave who hadn’t obeyed me from the moment I’d met her. “My condolences,” I said to Gaius. “May the gods bring you prosperity.”

  Gaius bobbed his head at my politeness, looking as though all the gods together with Fortuna leading the charge wouldn’t do him much good.

  Cassia gave Gaius a bow and meekly scurried to me as I turned to leave. She was the very picture of the demure, duteous slave. She would have made a fine actress, though she’d be offended if I told her so.

  Once outside the shop and out of earshot of Gaius, she whispered, “We should look inside the tunnels.”

  I agreed, but there was nothing we could do while Gaius went through his uncle’s things and the slave swept up.

  We wandered through the shops instead, which were lit by the oculus above the atrium as well as arched openings high in the walls, and asked about Selenius and the day he’d died. That is, Cassia asked, and I frowned at the shopkeepers who tried to dismiss her outright.

  No one had seen much of interest or out of the ordinary the morning of Selenius’s death. Selenius had arrived at his normal hour, his nephew in tow. As per usual, young Gaius had left at midmorning to return home, as business was most brisk in the early morning. Several more custome
rs had gone to Selenius and come out without being covered in blood or remarking on finding a dead body. A few described seeing Balbus go in—a hairy slave probably on an errand for his foreign master, they said—but they’d not observed him come out again. And they’d seen me.

  They hadn’t, to my relief, noticed Sergius. The boy must have traveled back and forth through the tunnels, unnoticed.

  The shopkeepers within the macellum, even the other money-changers, hadn’t thought much of Selenius. He was successful, but less than honorable, happy when a customer didn’t thoroughly count his takings.

  Cassia, who was good at suggesting things until others opened up with what they knew, pried out from some of the other money-changers that they suspected Selenius of his forgeries, but they didn’t know for certain whether he was guilty of them.

  What they did know was that Selenius bullied his slaves and was firm with his nephew, though perhaps no harder on him than a master would be to an apprentice.

  No one, it seemed, was very sorry Selenius was dead.

  Cassia casually mentioned the network of tunnels that ran beneath the area, but none seemed to be aware of them. Rome was an ancient city—buildings fell to ruin and were rebuilt or burned, the ashes leveled and more built on top of it. I, like most Romans, was aware of the most important ancient monuments, like Romulus’s hut and the rostra in the Forum, but the day-to-day buildings, even some of the most prominent temples, came and went. It was not so surprising that the shopkeepers didn’t know much about the sewers that ran beneath us, only that they worked.

  I found the garum vendor who’d noted my entrance to the macellum that day. The same two Gauls I’d seen lingering before were there again. Most Romans loved the fish sauce made by fermenting fish in salt—Cassia and I were exceptions.

  The two slaves were quite tall and had very fair hair, which meant they’d come a long way from their northern homeland. Some of the prisoners brought back from the Claudian campaigns in Britannia had been very tall and pale, others small and dark. The larger ones made good gladiators—they were arrogant and ruthless fighters. The one who’d defeated Xerxes had definitely been merciless. He’d died under my sword in a later bout.

  Cassia approached the garum seller’s counter, producing a coin and asking for the fish sauce she hated. I imagined she’d throw it into the river the first chance she got.

  The Gauls ceased their conversation and looked at me. We sized up one another, none of us speaking.

  Cassia leaned to the shopkeeper, indicating the Gauls, who’d moved off, still eying me. “Is their master a regular customer?” she asked, as though curious about the odd foreigners.

  The shopkeeper nodded, ready to gossip. “Sends them every day. He’s fond of taking Gauls for servants. Has a house full of them. Blond giants, every single one of them, even the women.” He chuckled.

  “They were here the day Selenius was killed,” Cassia stated.

  The shopkeeper’s amusement faded. “They were. I stay open later than most, as people often remember the garum at the last minute.” He jerked his thumb at me. “I saw him. Going in.”

  “I saw them as well,” I said, breaking my silence. “And you.”

  The shopkeeper finally understood that Cassia wasn’t simply passing the time of day. He turned a sharp eye on me. “I never left this stall to go murdering Selenius,” he snapped. “Anyway, why should I?”

  I shrugged. “Why should I? I’d never met the man.”

  “Well.” The shopkeeper waved a vague hand at me. “You’re a trained killer.”

  “In a fair fight,” I said. “What happened to Selenius was slaughter.”

  Returning my attention to the Gauls, I could imagine one holding down Selenius while the other cut his throat. They’d be strong enough to overpower him without much trouble, silencing him quickly.

  But I’d not noticed any blood on them that day. They’d have been covered with it. However, they might have changed out of their blood-soaked clothes, bundling them into the large baskets they’d carried.

  The two men regarded me without expression. I wondered if they were often blamed for whatever had gone wrong on any given day—when in doubt, accuse a slave. The shopkeeper, on the other hand, grew manifestly nervous. His worry might mean he was guilty, or only afraid he’d be accused and arrested, whether he’d committed the crime or not. Such things happened in our fair city.

  He shoved the jar of garum at Cassia. “Take it and go. Don’t come back here again.”

  Cassia calmly set the jar into her basket. “Cease pointing the blame for this murder on others,” she said. “And you won’t see us.”

  She turned and stepped past the giant men who watched her without speaking. She walked by me too, as though she were a great lady and I her bodyguard.

  I gave the Gauls and the shopkeeper one more stern look, and followed Cassia out.

  The streets were quiet as we exited the marketplace, the sun reaching its zenith. We walked with a slower tread, the heat seeping into our bones. Even the beggars and stray dogs began to crawl off into the shade to sleep.

  I wanted to start for home, but Cassia tugged my tunic. “Let’s visit the baker first,” she said. “You need to have another word with him.”

  She strode purposefully in the direction of Quintus’s bakery, and I had to hurry to keep up with her.

  Chapter 10

  As he had been two days ago, Quintus was finishing his business for the day. He handed a round loaf of bread to a dark-skinned woman who loaded it into her basket and departed, giving me a startled glance as she walked away.

  Quintus hadn’t seen us, and he turned back to his ovens. “A moment …” He shoveled several loaves out of one oven with his large bread peel and slid them into the tube-shaped holes in his wall to cool. “Now then, what do you—”

  He froze when he saw me, his face becoming whiter than his flour-dusted tunic. “Leonidas.” He upended the handle of the long bread peel and leaned heavily on it. “I swear to you, I do not have your money. That is why I sent you to Selenius. Now he’s dead and can’t pay me.”

  Cassia set her basket on the tiled counter, lifted out a tablet, and made a show of checking the marks within it. “You really ought not to employ the services of others if you cannot pay them, you know.” She turned the tablet around and tapped a row of scratches. “Quintus Publius, ten sestertii.”

  Quintus paid no attention to Cassia or her tablet. He focused on me, his eyes filled with deep fear. “I have told you. Selenius owed me much. He cheated me. That’s why I sent you to him. I thought if anyone could shake it out of him, it would be Leonidas the Gladiator …”

  “Or, he was dead already,” I cut in. “And you knew. You sent me to be caught for the murder.”

  I hadn’t thought Quintus’s face could lose more color, but his countenance became nearly as gray as the dead Selenius’s. “I promise you I did not know. I did not know until the boy told me.”

  I stopped, my heart going cold. “What boy?”

  Quintus waved his hands at the air over his counter. “Boy who hangs about the street. Don’t know his name. Was following you that day. When I sent you off, he told me Selenius was dead and then ran away.”

  I carefully did not look at Cassia, who intently studied her basket. “You didn’t call after me,” I said to Quintus. “When the boy told you, you didn’t try to stop me.”

  Quintus shrugged. “You were gone too fast. And I thought …” More lip wetting. “I thought that, if Selenius was truly dead—and I only had the boy’s word for it, mind you—you’d at least search his shop and bring back the money.”

  “Then I would be in the Tullianum awaiting execution for stealing,” I said. “I’m not a thief.”

  Quintus peered up at me as though realizing he had badly miscalculated my character. He didn’t offend me—I’d given up that particular emotion a long time ago.

  Cassia pushed her basket toward Quintus. “Will you put one of those loaves that a
re cooling in here, please?”

  Quintus forced his attention to her, but shook his head. “They’re promised to another. I have more inside—”

  “No, one of those.” Cassia pointed at the round openings that held the loaves he’d just taken from the oven. “You can make more for whatever wealthy man is buying them.” She leaned across the counter to the Quintus, who was a head shorter than she was. “You owe Leonidas ten sestertii. He could take you to court for not paying him, and then you’d owe him more. Or he could bring suit against you for trying to make it look as though he’d killed Selenius.” She straightened. “Or, you could simply give me a fresh loaf of bread.”

  Color at last returned to Quintus’s cheeks, red blotches of it. He snarled, yanked one of the new loaves from its cooling place, and dropped it into Cassia’s basket.

  “Excellent,” Cassia said. “I’ll be back tomorrow for another.”

  “Another?” Quintus asked, startled.

  “The price of a loaf is half a sestertius,” Cassia answered serenely. “I will come to your stall for the next nineteen days, and you will give me a fresh loaf of bread made from your finest flour. Then you will have paid the debt.” She lifted the basket and covered the bread with the cloth within. “Good day.”

  An emotion at last broke its way through my numbness as we turned away and left Quintus spluttering. It was mirth.

  That afternoon, we dined on fresh bread, oil, fruit, and boiled lentils. We sat on stools at our table, the door to the balcony propped open to allow in whatever breeze might amble down the lane.

  We were somber as we ate, however.

  “You don’t think that little boy killed Selenius, do you?” Cassia asked me after a long silence.

  Though I did not want to consider the question, I knew I had to. “It is possible,” I said, turning over my thoughts. “When Sergius heard Quintus tell me to go to Selenius, the lad knew Selenius was dead. That means he’d seen Selenius’s body.”