Past Crimes: A Compendium of Historical Mysteries

by Ashley Gardner

  Marcella’s farm lay five miles outside the city. I left the Via Latina at a crossroads, saying farewell to the merchant and suggesting a safe house along the way to spend the night. We parted, and I made my way over a hill and into a green valley.

  I’d always marveled that Xerxes had come out here most evenings to look after the farm and his wife, and then hastened back to the ludus the next morning for training. He’d been a slave, sold to the ludus by his former master when it was clear he’d do well as a fighter, but he’d been allowed to marry and move into Marcella’s farm. Our lanista believed in giving us rope, but only so much. Xerxes wouldn’t have gotten far if he’d tried to run.

  But Xerxes had always returned, right on time for training—he was a stickler for duty and his honor. He’d died for that honor, leaving Marcella alone with five children to raise.

  On the other hand, if Xerxes had tried to run away and been caught, he’d have been sent to the mines or quarries, which would also be death, only slower. At least in the amphitheater, he’d gone out a hero.

  Marcella didn’t see it that way. She’d loved Xerxes and deeply grieved his passing. Still did.

  Her farmhouse was a square building presenting a blank face to the world, with its doors and few windows overlooking a protected courtyard. At night, she brought in the animals and her equally wild children, and locked the place tighter than the best fortress on a hostile border.

  Marcella was in the courtyard with one of her daughters, a mite with long black hair and Xerxes’s merry eyes. She and Marcella were milking a goat that wasn’t happy with the process. Sergius, who’d woken, looked about with interest.

  Marcella rose from the ground, her mouth open as she saw me walk into the courtyard. Her daughter caught the goat before it could dart away, holding it with her arms around its neck.

  “Who in the name of all the gods is this?” Marcella planted her stare on Sergius.

  I set the boy gently on his feet but he looked as skittish as the goat. “This is Sergius. I … found him.”

  Marcella only raised her brows, waiting for an explanation.

  I would never have called Marcella pretty—her dark hair was too thin, her body fleshy rather than curved, her face too flat. But she had a vitality that made a person forget she was plain. I’d met courtesans praised for their astonishing beauty who’d be invisible next to Marcella. I understood why Xerxes would have done anything for her.

  There were five little Xerxes on this farm, three boys and two girls. Marcella ruled them with a firm but kind hand.

  “And you decided to bring him to me?” Marcella demanded as she ran her dark gaze over the thin boy.

  I shrugged. “Xerxes always told me he needed more hands in the fields.”

  Her lips firmed. “This lad couldn’t lift a rake. He’ll need a lot of feeding up before he’s any use on a farm.”

  Sergius stared up at her, his mouth open, a mixture of fear and interest in his eyes. Marcella joined us and crouched down next to him. “I’ve just made a stew, child. Would you like some?”

  Sergius glanced at me for confirmation, and when I nodded, he turned back to Marcella. “Yes.”

  “Oh, he can speak,” Marcella said. “That’s a mercy. Fabricia, turn her loose and take Sergius inside. If your brothers and sister remember to come in for dinner, we’ll eat.”

  Small Fabricia unwrapped herself from the goat, who tottered two steps and then halted to graze on stray bits of grass. The little girl, who hadn’t lost her smile since I’d walked in, waved at me and took Sergius by the hand. She towed him off, Sergius looking back at me uncertainly, but I saw his curiosity about not only his surroundings but Fabricia as well.

  I held out one of the few coins I carried. “I’ll send more money for him when I can. And visit him.”

  Marcella straightened up, pulled pieces of straw from her hair, and accepted the coin. She’d need it, and she knew it. “I suppose you’ll tell me the story someday. How is your other stray—I mean Cassia?”

  Marcella had the idea that I let Cassia live with me out of kindness. I shrugged. “Cassia is Cassia.”

  “Good. I like her.”

  She studied me with her lively dark eyes, as though she expected me to say more about Cassia. I kept silent, not wanting to blurt out anything about murders and forgeries, not until I made sure I wouldn’t be arrested for the crime. I didn’t want my ill fortune coming back to haunt Marcella and her brood.

  “You are well?” I asked Marcella when the silence had stretched to awkwardness.

  For a moment, Marcella’s animation deserted her, and I saw a blankness that I sensed many times in myself.

  “Well in body,” Marcella said. She put a hand on my wrist. “You are kind to ask.”

  Her touch meant nothing more than gratitude. I knew that. Marcella had only ever loved Xerxes, and he her.

  I had no intention of offering bodily comfort to Marcella, if I could even perform on command, and she had no intention of accepting it. I’d once suggested she find another husband to help her, and she’d laughed at me, telling me she’d pushed out enough children, thank you very much.

  Marcella withdrew her hand. “I might have enough stew to tempt even your appetite. If not, I’ll round up something.”

  “No need. I’ll eat when I reach home.”

  Marcella gave me a doubtful look. “It’s growing late. You won’t reach Rome before dark.”

  “I walk quickly,” I said with a faint smile. “I don’t want to leave Cassia alone.”

  Marcella regarded me without speaking for a moment. “I see. Greet her for me. And don’t worry—I’ll look after your boy. That is, if you promise to return and tell me how you found him, and why you decided you should be responsible for him.”

  I nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

  She burst out laughing, something Marcella could do spontaneously. I didn’t always know what she found funny, but she had a comforting laugh.

  “Go on with you, Leonidas. May the gods look favorably upon you.”

  “And you,” I returned. We exchanged another look, she still finding something very amusing, and I went.

  I had taken a long time to walk five miles to Marcella’s, as the merchants had moved slowly to conserve the strength of their donkeys and their own feet. Traveling back took less time, as I moved at my own pace in the falling darkness.

  It was dangerous to walk alone at night, even for a large and terrifying man like me. I’d easily take on any lone attacker, but a dozen men could have me on the ground before I positioned myself to fight. Bandits weren’t known for following the rules of one-on-one combat. Gladiators fought plenty dirty, but we were nothing compared to desperate brigands.

  I relied on the fact that I looked like a man who didn’t have two coins on me to keep the robbers away. I wore a simple tunic belted at the waist and sandals, the dress of a freedman. No one would mistake me for anyone of high birth and fortune. In Rome, a man’s clothing denoted what he was—slave, patrician, senator, a retired gladiator. The penalty for pretending to be in a different class could be dire.

  I rarely had the chance to walk alone under the stars, and I found myself enjoying it. The air was cool, the sky open above me, the space of the gods filled with thousands of lights, some brighter than others.

  As I drew closer to the city, the tombs of prominent Romans surrounded me, cold monuments to what once had been living, breathing people. I was tired of death, but these marble and concrete tombs did not bring me melancholy—they were monuments to honor memories, not bloody bodies strewn in my path as I walked from the amphitheatre, surviving once more.

  I did not worry about gaining entrance to the city. Wagons and carts were only allowed in to make deliveries or take wares out again in the middle of the night. The edict made sense, as any other time of day, the heavy vehicles would block the streets, and we’d be bottled in.

  Citizens paid for the convenience of moving about more easily during the day by nig
hts filled with noise. Warehouses backed onto apartments, and a single domus might have storage houses all around it, with wares delivered after dark.

  I was never bothered by the noise—I slept through it all—but it drove Cassia mad. She’d been raised on a villa in Campania where her father had been a slave, and where all had been, she said, blissful quietude.

  One day, perhaps we’d have enough money to live in a small house in the hills—a modest home if not a grand villa. Of course, I’d have to find a way to buy Cassia or free her from our benefactor. She didn’t belong to me; she’d been lent.

  I caught up with another merchant a half mile from the gate, and earned a ride on the back of his cart filled with unknown metal objects in exchange for my protection. I dangled my feet from the back of the cart, whatever was in his bags poking me in the thighs.

  We went through the gate without hindrance, and I slid off the cart near the Circus Maximus. The merchant headed for a warehouse on the Aventine, and I continued around the Circus and up to the Subura, after a farewell and a thanks. I still didn’t know what was in the wagon—bowls, urns, statues of gods?

  I walked up the stairs to our small apartment, and inside.

  Cassia launched herself up from the table and at me, her dark eyes wide, worry in every line of her. I felt her slim arms around my body, her many-curled head land on my shoulder.

  “Leonidas,” she said brokenly, in a very un-Cassia-like way. “They found Selenius. The vigiles said they’d scour the city for you, and you didn’t come home. I thought … I thought …”

  To my astonishment, she burrowed her face into my tunic, trembling and holding on hard.

  Chapter 5

  “They can’t be searching for me very diligently.” I rested my hand on Cassia’s back, finding it supple and warm under her linen gown. “I walked from the Circus without seeing a one of them.”

  The vigiles were night watchmen whose main job was to keep public order and look for fires—if a fire broke out, they hastened to pull down houses to prevent the spread of flames. A mob of them might track down a killer, but if their commander thought they had better things to do, they’d let others find and drag the criminal to the magistrates.

  “I traveled with a merchant and his family on the way,” I went on, feeling the need to explain. “It took more time to reach Marcella’s.”

  Cassia unwound herself from me, and I let my touch slide from her. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, which were red-rimmed and wet.

  “Of course,” she said. “I knew it would be something like that. Or that you’d decided to stay the night at the farm. You ought to have.” Cassia took a step back. “Why didn’t you? It was dark …”

  I shrugged. Then yawned. I was exhausted and my bed beckoned. I should be as worried as Cassia that Selenius had been found and men were searching for me, but …

  “Why are they looking for me?” I asked abruptly. “Was I accused?”

  Cassia wiped her eyes again, tucking back a lock of hair that had tumbled down. “Not yet. But another shopkeeper near Selenius’s stall said he saw you. Others observed you visit Quintus the baker before that, and Quintus volunteered that he’d sent you to Selenius to collect a debt. The shopkeeper in the macellum can’t be sure when he last saw Selenius alive. Before you went in search of him, anyway.”

  I silently called down every curse I could think of on Quintus the baker and observant shopkeepers.

  I should have felt more fear, anger, or indignation at the very least that I’d be taken in for killing a man I hadn’t. I had been worried about just this thing earlier.

  But after visiting Marcella, remembering Xerxes, I was numb—nothing penetrated the fog in my head.

  I was tired, I told myself. Cassia had awakened me from sleep too abruptly this morning, and I’d spent the day running around tunnels in the city followed by walking the five miles to Marcella’s farm and back.

  I turned away from Cassia and sought my bedchamber, stumbling in my haze of fatigue.

  Cassia stepped in front of me. “You can’t go to sleep now—we must clear you of this murder.”

  I gently brushed past her. Cassia would have to find a way to help me on her own, and I trusted that she would.

  As I more or less fell onto the bed, I thought about the tunnels Sergius had showed me, and realized that anyone who knew of them could have crept undetected into Selenius’s shop. The man who’d attacked me showed that desperate people might lurk in the tunnels, looking for a victim to rob.

  I’d tell Cassia about them. Show them to her. She’d no doubt figure out exactly how much time it would take for a man to slip through the tunnels from every part of the city and out again in any other part, drawing little maps and diagrams to explain it to those who could not understand.

  I was already half asleep by the time my reed bed crackled beneath my body. I heard Cassia let out a long sigh, then felt my sandals loosen and slide from my feet. A light blanket found its way across my legs, cutting the cool breeze that curled through the open window. Cassia hummed quietly, as she often did, but then the sound cut off.

  “Oh, Leonidas,” Cassia whispered. “Whatever will become of me if I lose you?”

  A good question. She could not return to her former mistress, and our current benefactor might find a less salubrious man to lend her to, one who might beat her or force her.

  I needed to stay alive, and free, to keep her safe. I would clear my name, and Cassia would help me.

  It was my last thought before oblivion. Tonight, I hoped, I would be able to rest without dreams.

  The dreams left me alone until dawn, and then they came swooping.

  In them, I saw Selenius, standing upright and regarding me calmly while blood flooded from his sliced throat. He didn’t seem to be aware that he was already dead—he only held out a slip of paper, demanding a huge amount of money for it. I couldn’t pay, but he offered to take the boy Sergius in lieu.

  I shouted at Sergius to run, but the lad was frozen in place, staring at me in terror across the blood-drenched floor.

  It’s all right, Marcella whispered from far away. Sergius is safe. You took him to the farm, remember?

  The voice changed from Marcella’s to Cassia’s, but my worry only rose. Cassia should not be here. Selenius’s smile when he saw her exactly matched the shape of the cut in his neck.

  I’ll take Cassia instead, Selenius seemed to say. Beautiful morsel. Proud bitch. Better on her hands and knees, I think.

  Another man had said those very words to me at one time. I’d nearly killed him. I lunged at Selenius, and his blood showered me as he fell, warm and stinking.

  “Leonidas!” A blow fell on my stomach, a strangely light one.

  The thump didn’t fit with my dream, and I swam toward light, blinking open my eyes to see Cassia standing at arm’s length, her stick tapping me just above my navel. The blanket was around my hips, tangling my legs.

  “Leonidas,” Cassia repeated, sounding relieved. “Marcianus is here.”

  Morning had broken sometime when I’d been asleep. Rome was washed with golden light, the cool of the night lingering in the streets to temporarily drive out the acrid scents of smoke, food, and humanity.

  A man sat at our table, hunched in conversation with Cassia. He had a fringe of graying hair, a thin but well-muscled body, a bulbous nose, and brown eyes that in turn could be kind or stern. Kind when he was feeding me a tincture and telling me that setting my bone would hurt but he’d be swift, stern when admonishing me to rest and on no account fight for at least forty days.

  His name was Nonus Marcianus, and he was a physician, a medicus, for Rome’s most lucrative ludus. He’d been healing beaten-down gladiators for years, becoming an authority on broken bones, lacerations, wounds deep and shallow, and the chances a man had of living or not. His balms and potions, which he’d learned to mix in the East, had lowered the incidences of festering wounds and rotting limbs in our school. The gladiators, even t
he most brutish of them, had only good words for Nonus Marcianus.

  He was a learned man of a Roman equestrian family, though born in the Greek isles, migrating to Rome after he trained as a physician in Greece. He’d taken to Cassia right away, as though pleased he’d found an equal in understanding.

  They spoke Greek, Cassia relaxed and smiling as she chatted with him, Marcianus looking content as he answered her questions—or whatever he was saying. I couldn’t understand a word.

  Both broke off as I entered, and Marcianus rose. He wore a tunic that hung below his knees, and he’d laid his toga, the garment of a respectable citizen, across the back of his chair.

  “Greetings of the gods to you, Leonidas.”

  “And you,” I answered, trying to clear the sleep from my head.

  I’d put on a clean tunic without Cassia saying a word. I’d had enough of the stained one I’d worn all day yesterday, which had been further ripened by my walk to the farm and back. I’d be visiting the baths today—the smell of unwashed gladiator was not my favorite.

  “Your lanista rues the day he lost you,” Marcianus said as we both sat down.

  Cassia brought Marcianus a cup of wine, apologizing that it wasn’t the best. Marcianus politely accepted. A bowl of nuts had found its way to the table as well. We never had much food in the apartment, but Cassia always managed to find refreshments for special guests.

  “Does he?” I asked without much interest. I took up a handful of almonds and popped them into my mouth, enjoying their smoky flavor. Cassia bought them roasted with a touch of salt.

  “Aemilianus has taken a contract with a patrician putting on games in Ostia, I hear. The prices Aemil can ask have gone a long way down without you at the school. He toys with asking you to return to perform in special bouts.”

  I was already shaking my head. No more games, no more amphitheatres. It wasn’t fear that kept me from fighting—I continued to practice and train, even dropping in for sessions with Aemil on occasion, but I refused to take another life. Ever. For any reason.