Past Crimes: A Compendium of Historical Mysteries

by Ashley Gardner

  “No,” I said.

  He seemed to believe me. “But you were there. You saw him.”

  “Yes.”

  The man was undaunted by my clipped answers. “I heard about his sister. Such a pity.” He shook his head with the air of one confident such tragedies would never happen to him.

  “His sister?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “What has happened to her?”

  “It was long time ago. A few years anyway.” He leaned closer to me, thrilled to be the one to impart the tale. “She was violated by another money-changer. This Selenius’s friend.”

  He gave me a nod and withdrew, as though allowing me time to digest the information.

  Poor woman. To be raped and then have her brother die violently was much to bear. I wondered if someone was out to gain vengeance on Selenius’s family. Such things happened. I’d suggest to Cassia that we find out who’d attacked the sister—he might be the murderer.

  “They say you did it,” the man went on. He’d inched imperceptibly nearer to me. “So many saw you wandering about yesterday, but all say you had no blood on you at all. They also saw you with a boy. For enjoyment?” He wiggled his brows up and down.

  “No.” I snarled the word so fiercely the young man scooted down the bench again.

  “Then what were you doing with a boy?”

  Did he have nothing to do all day but chatter in the bath about other people? Probably not. If he was a patrician, he was probably an aedile, on the first rung of the ladder to senator. A pampered man’s pampered son.

  I realized I had to have some explanation for Sergius. I was a man people noticed, and they noticed what I did. “He was lost,” I said, my voice retaining its growl. “I took him home.”

  “Ah.” Disappointment coated the word. The young man slid a little closer again. “My father imports the best wine. He gives me as much as I want for my own purposes. Share some with me?”

  The hope in his eyes was unmistakable. There was no shame in a man lying in bed with another man as long as he did not do it to excess and kept his liaisons private. I preferred women, who were softer, smelled better, and were far less arrogant.

  “No,” I said abruptly and rose from the pool.

  If I’d been any other freedman, the lad might have had his servants beat me for rudeness, but a hero of the games was given some latitude.

  I stepped out, leaving him staring after me. Maybe the sight of my naked body would sate him for a while. I turned around briefly and let him see the rest of it—the least I could do for his information, whatever good it might do me.

  He was wise enough not to pursue me, and I returned to the changing room, dried off and donned my clothes.

  If nothing else, being clean made me feel better. Now my stomach growled, reminding me I had missed several meals.

  I left the Campus and its many entertainments and returned to the street of shops in the Pallacinae. I found a tavern and squeezed onto a stool at the corner of a table, asking the harried barmaid to bring me lentils and whatever vegetables they had cooking.

  She returned before long with a bowl of lentils and limp-looking greens, along with a crackling piece of bread. I dunked the bread into the broth and scooped up the lentils and veg, enjoying every mouthful, though the broth was weak and the vegetables old. The wine was indifferent as well, but I drank it down, thirsty after the hot bath.

  I realized, when I was finished, that I had no money to pay. I’d given Marcella and the man who’d applied the strigil my last coins. Cassia hadn’t known I was short of funds, or she’d have made certain I had at least the price of a meal.

  I confessed my lack of coin to the barmaid. “My slave will be along later with it.” Cassia would be vexed, but she believed in paying our debts as quickly as possible.

  The barmaid, who had shining black hair and skin tanned from hot summers, cocked her head and assessed me. “No matter.” She gestured for me to follow her. “Come with me.”

  I assumed she’d lead me to the back to wash up or stir pots of beans, but she took me up a flight of stairs to a tiny room dimly lit by a small square window. It had a slab of a bed covered with reeds, much the same as my own.

  The barmaid began to undress. I remained in the doorway, not sure how to tell her she’d be disappointed.

  I didn’t have the chance. The barmaid caught my hand and dragged me to the bed, busily kissing me while she untied my belt and dragged off my tunic.

  Then she proceeded to use me thoroughly. I don’t think she noticed that this former gladiator couldn’t raise his sword. She had me flat on my back, finding creative ways to take pleasure from me and my body. I’d been with women plenty—I’d been a fixture at a brothel near my ludus—but this woman, as much as she tried, delighted nothing in me.

  I thought of Selenius’s sister and her defilement. No doubt hers had been far more violent and terrifying, but I had an inkling of what she’d felt. She hadn’t been a person to the man who’d taken her, only a body to be used.

  But that was what a gladiator was, wasn’t it? A fighting body, performing for money? It was why we were infamis, and why a barmaid thought I’d be more than happy to pay for my dinner by letting her play with me.

  By the time she wore herself out and fell asleep, the afternoon had come, heating the city. I slipped away, sliding on my tunic and moving quietly down the stairs into the street.

  I felt unclean, so I stepped into the baths close to home and washed my body all over again. It cost an as to enter this complex, but I told the attendants that Cassia would come by to pay later. They knew both of us and acquiesced. No paying my way with my body again today.

  I was known and accepted in this bath complex, so I had to talk with men I’d become acquainted with while I soaked. That is, they talked, and I mostly nodded. But I learned why the vigiles had broken off their hunt for me last night and I hadn’t been arrested by the cohorts this morning.

  Apparently, the garum shopkeeper had reported seeing a man come out of the macellum, but hadn’t first seen him going in. The cohorts were now looking for this person, who had been described as dirty, young, and frightened. I had a feeling I knew who they were talking about.

  The sky was darkening by the time I left the baths and made my way home. Cassia wasn’t there when I arrived.

  I stood in the doorway of our little apartment, looking over the room, my bed in the far corner, Cassia’s little bunk on the other side of the table. A balcony opened to my right, larger than most as it was poised on the flat roof of the shop below.

  I always knew when Cassia was out, and not because our domicile was so small I’d notice at once. I could walk in with my eyes closed and know she wasn’t here.

  The air was different, empty. Silent. Cassia was often humming or singing softly. Her two long stolae hanging on pegs near her bed and her cloak for cooler weather looked forlorn and waiting, as did her spare pair of sandals tucked neatly against the wall.

  The table held her writing tools, tablets and stylus, papyrus and charcoal sticks, lined up exactly even with one another. In the middle of the table was the cup Sergius had dropped, stuck together again, the cracks in the clay almost invisible.

  I lifted the cup, examining the crude drawing, running my finger over the letters that meant my name. Leonidas. A name that hadn’t been my own, but Leonidas was who I became.

  When I heard her step behind me, a tightness in me loosened. Cassia began speaking as soon as she saw me, her words flowing around me.

  “Nonus Marcianus told me how to mix a paste that would mend it in a trice,” she said, motioning to the cup in my hand. “I saw him this afternoon, as I wandered about on all my errands.”

  I heard her unwind the palla that kept her head covered from the sun and mitigated the offense to men who disapproved of a woman running about by herself. Slave women did not have the same restrictions that patrician and equestrian women did—a Roman lady should stay at home and not show herself, unless she traveled in
a covered litter or sedan chair with attendants. Cassia’s former mistress had insisted Cassia never leave the house unless she was muffled, to keep shame from the household, she’d said.

  Cassia went on she set a basket on the table. “When you take it to Sergius, perhaps I could go with you? To see the hills again, breathe air that doesn’t have the stench of Rome in it would be …”

  She stepped next to me and inhaled as though trying to find the clear air of Campania in the heart of this city.

  The breath cut off. I looked down to see her staring at me, her expression changing from her usual animation to bewilderment. She delicately sniffed again, then turned away, color rising in her cheeks. She blinked rapidly, ducking her head so I would not see.

  I realized that though I’d bathed again after the tavern, the scent of the barmaid and her zeal must linger. Cassia would know what it meant.

  I opened my mouth to explain, but Cassia bent over the table, her back to me, her chatter resuming. “I went to the tavern while I was out and found us dinner—lovely, fresh endives and some greens, and there’s bread left over from this morning. What did you learn at the baths?”

  Chapter 7

  Cassia laid out our dinner, as she did every night—a meal prepared by the tavern at the end of our street and a flask of wine from the shop downstairs. She’d instructed the tavern keeper exactly how to make the food I was used to, and now he and his wife prepared the dishes and had them ready as a matter of course.

  I watched while Cassia poured two cups of the wine from a small flask, sweetening it with honey. She talked all the while, even though she’d asked me what I’d found out, never letting me speak.

  I sat down and chewed through a salad that had been flavored with lemon, almonds, and a drop of honey, and endives roasted with a little vinegar and salt. The barley had been cooked in a rich broth of vegetables—I suspected some leftover pork ended up in the vegetable broth as well, but I didn’t fuss. The meal was fresh and good, a far cry from the one at the other tavern.

  As I ate, Cassia told me about her afternoon.

  “I saw Selenius’s sister, Selenia,” she said as she neatly sliced off a bit of endive. “She has much to do preparing for her brother’s funeral and helping her son take over the shop. She is shattered, Selenia is, but young Gaius seems capable enough. He’s nineteen and has been assisting his uncle for several years, and at least understands the business. Gaius knows all about the forgeries, by the way.”

  I took advantage of Cassia putting the endive into her mouth to break in. “You asked about the forgeries outright?”

  Cassia swallowed and sipped her wine. “I hinted. Young Gaius crumpled at once. He was so ashamed, and begged me to say nothing. His uncle, you see, and another friend, had come up with the idea. Selenius would give out these chits to select friends for nothing, they would hie off to whatever city accepted them, and the shipping agents there would pay out. The friends would then return to Selenius, and they’d divide the lot.”

  I’d thought of something similar as I dozed in the baths.

  “Wouldn’t the agents in the other cities catch on after a while?” I asked. “When their money was never replenished?”

  “Ah.” Cassia smiled, her melancholy fleeing. “That is the beauty of it. Selenius would pay back one of them. Then a man would arrive with another false voucher for a smaller amount of money from the same shipping agent. Selenius would then use that money plus more from the take to pay the next agent. Then one of his friends would withdraw funds from him, bring it to Selenius, and he’d pay the next one in line. He had all the agents believing they’d been paid back, when in fact, he was floating the same money from one to the other to the other. Astonishing.”

  Cassia sat back, a little smile on her face. Any clever arrangement involving numbers pleased her. The fact that Selenius and his friends had committed blatant fraud and theft was beside the point.

  “Even so.” I lifted my bowl, poured the last drop of broth into my mouth, and set the bowl down with a thump. “Someone would catch on eventually. Maybe they did.”

  “And were so angry that they killed Selenius?” Cassia finished, nodding. “I think so too. I’ve asked young Gaius to give me a list of names of these shipping agents who’ve been skimmed. I promised I’d say nothing—his uncle is dead and can’t answer for the crime anymore—and Gaius will find a way to pay back all the money without argument. I’ll discover if any of these men were in Rome yesterday, and if so, we’ll find them and see if they indeed killed Selenius in a rage. Rest assured, your name will be cleared, Leonidas.”

  She spoke with great confidence, but I knew better than to relax. If Romans decided they wanted justice, they’d have it, no matter who had to pay. They might think a champion gladiator being torn apart by wild beasts a fitting end to the problem.

  I finished my meal in silence. Cassia chattered on, about Selenia, the sister, and her grief. Cassia had pretended to be a slave working for Marcianus to gain admittance to Selenius’s house and ask questions—in fact, Marcianus had accompanied her, saying he’d been sent to look at Selenius’s body.

  “Marcianus confirmed that Selenius was killed midmorning yesterday, as he suspected, which ought to clear you. You were fast asleep.”

  True. The idea of bed appealed to me, so I rose and set down my wine cup.

  “They’re looking for a man,” I announced. “I heard this in the baths. A shopkeeper said he saw a man come out of the center of the shops but not go in, much earlier than he saw me. I think they’re talking about the man I met in the tunnels. He was afraid, and he had blood on him.” I’d thought I’d caused the blood on his tunic, but Marcianus had said I’d given his wrist a clean break, so perhaps not. “I’ll look for him in the morning.”

  I mumbled this last as I walked into my bedchamber and kicked off my sandals. My tunic followed them to the floor, and I pulled a blanket around my naked body before stretching out on my pallet and entering the land of Morpheus.

  My oblivion lasted a few hours and then I was awake again. This happened sometimes—either I slept for a night and half a day, or I woke in the small hours, slumber eluding me.

  I pulled on my tunic Cassia had hung on its hook and slid on my sandals, which were now lined up in perfect parallel by the wall.

  The rest of the apartment was as neat, the supper things long gone, towels folded, Cassia’s tablets and papers stacked at exact right angles to the table.

  I expected to see Cassia in her bed, curled on her side. In sleep was the only time she allowed herself to be untidy, her limbs askew and her hair tumbling.

  Her pallet was empty, however, the blanket smooth. I felt a moment of alarm, then I heard a rustle from the balcony. Releasing a breath, I stepped through the doorway to the flat space that served as our makeshift terrace.

  Cassia sat on the one stool that we kept here, a folding tripod she’d found secondhand at a market stall. She leaned back against the wall of our apartment, moonlight glittering on her tear-streaked cheeks.

  I paused in perplexity. Cassia scolding, lecturing, teasing, or rolling her eyes at me I understood. Cassia crying, I did not.

  She hadn’t even wept when she’d discovered she’d been tossed from the lavish villa in which she’d grown up to be slave to a former gladiator, a brute of a man who was the lowest of the low.

  My foot crunched on grit as I stepped out to the balcony. Cassia jumped and wiped her eyes.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked with an attempt at her usual brightness.

  I dropped to sit on the edge and dangle my legs over the wall. We had no railing here, wooden or otherwise, but the space was wide. We didn’t worry about thieves climbing up from the street to our apartment because we had nothing to steal.

  “No,” I answered. “What makes you cry?”

  I heard her start, as though she’d expected I would not notice. “Nothing important.”

  Though I’d lived solely with men all my life, I’d known enou
gh women to realize this was not a true answer. Women said, It’s nothing, when it was the most serious thing on earth.

  I also knew that cajoling her would do no good. If Cassia did not want to tell me a thing, she would keep it firmly to herself.

  I faced the street, listening to the rumble of delivery wagons and the shouts of carters in the distance.

  We sat in silence for a while. A cooling breeze drifted through the narrow street below, driving away the smells and stuffiness of the June night. I thought of Sergius resting his head trustingly on my shoulder as I carried him the long way to Marcella’s farm.

  “I like children,” I said.

  Cassia drew an abrupt breath. “Pardon?”

  “I like children,” I repeated without turning to her. I mused on this for a moment. “I didn’t know.”

  I heard a rustling and then Cassia was beside me, folding herself to sit and hang her legs next to mine. She stared off into the street as I did. “I think I do too,” she said. “Or perhaps I simply like Sergius.”

  “Maybe.”

  Again we fell silent, both of us marveling at this new thing we’d discovered about ourselves. The coolness and moonlight transformed Rome into a silver and black mosaic, the harsh lines of the buildings softening, the smell of so many people packed together eased.

  “Do you think our benefactor is keeping you from being questioned for the killing?” Cassia asked in a quiet voice.

  Our benefactor hadn’t showed his hand, or the rest of him, for that matter, in our lives since he’d found me this apartment and sent Cassia to me. As far as I knew, he’d forgotten about us.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  We watched the moonlight for a while, cut by the smoke from the perpetual fires burning to heat the baths. Entire forests had been razed to keep Romans in warm bathwater.

  “You are a good man, Leonidas,” Cassia said. “I will find out who did this crime and clear you of its taint. I promise you.”