A Gladiator's Tale

by Ashley Gardner

  Martolia slipped away from me and collapsed before the remains of Rufus’s body, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking as she cried. Chryseis had been panicked by Rufus’s murder, but Martolia grieved.

  I stepped into the bedroom, lifted the covering from the bed, and draped it over Rufus. Hidden, he became innocuous lumps under cloth.

  The vigile captain sent me a troubled glance as his men tried to herd the residents out and back downstairs. “Bad business. Very bad. And on my watch.”

  “This isn’t the first such murder,” I said in a low voice.

  The guard captain’s eyes opened wide, revealing dark brown depths. “You mean someone else on the Aventine’s been chopped to bits?”

  “No.” I spoke quietly to the captain and Avitus. “Another gladiator, in the Subura. I found him in pieces, like Rufus.”

  Avitus’s mouth dropped open, revealing young and whole teeth. “You mean someone is killing gladiators? For what purpose?”

  They’d die just fine in the arena, he meant. “I don’t know,” I had to say. “My lanista is very worried.”

  “Isis help us,” the captain exclaimed. “That means there’s a madman loose in Rome.”

  I could argue that plenty of madmen existed in Rome, but I understood his meaning. One killing could be explained by someone who hated Ajax personally. Two meant a grudge against gladiators in general. Or, alarmingly, it could mean the person would extend his pleasure at killing to the general population.

  “He needs to be stopped,” I said.

  “Obviously.” The watch captain snorted. “What are you doing here, Avitus? This isn’t your patch.”

  Exactly the question I’d pondered.

  Avitus flushed. He was young, slim, strong, and easily flustered. “Not my patch for patrolling, no. I live nearby. Next insula over. It’s my night off.”

  I recalled the building I’d gazed upon when I’d stood on Chryseis’s balcony earlier. I wondered if Avitus had spied me there and had come to discover what I was up to.

  I fixed a stern gaze on him. “You didn’t see anyone carting the body here, did you?”

  “No.” Avitus raised his hands. “Was home, sleeping most of the day. I came over when I heard the noise. And saw you.” He pointed at me. “You’re good at finding trouble, Leonidas.”

  Avitus had been present at another death in the Subura earlier this year and a suspect for it.

  “Trouble is good at finding me.” I turned to the watch captain. “What will you do now?”

  He sighed and rubbed his head, which was thick with dark curls. “Interview everyone in this building, discover if they saw anything. Do you think the wife will want his body? If she isn’t found guilty of murder.”

  I doubted it. I did not imagine Chryseis as the grieving widow putting up a long inscription to a beloved husband.

  “I’ll take him back to the ludus,” I said.

  Relief flickered in the captain’s eyes though he strove to hide it. “Good of you. I’m Marcus Vatia, captain of the Aventine vigiles.”

  He was a stocky Roman, hard with muscle, his face one of a man who brooked no nonsense.

  “You pray to Isis,” I observed, recalling his exclamation on seeing the body.

  “Why not? She’s the most powerful goddess of them all. Faced the underworld, defeated evil, raised the dead, and is a good mother. I want her on my side.”

  The room had finally emptied, the last vigiles planting themselves on the stairs to prevent spectators from returning. The residents, realizing they’d see no more, drifted home, but not silently. They babbled to each other about Rufus, Chryseis, and the murder, embellishments to the stories beginning to take shape.

  I noted the girl from across the hall didn’t retreat there but took the stairs up to the apartments at the very top of the insula. Curious.

  The one person I did not see was Cassia.

  A soft noise sounded across the hall, in the other apartment, and I moved there swiftly.

  This set of rooms was identical to Chryseis’s. Other than the table and a few plates and a jug in the corner, I saw nothing more.

  The bedchamber beyond contained several pallets pushed together, filling the tiny room. The family must huddle together on them like dogs, using each other for warmth.

  No one was there now, except Cassia. She’d pulled one pallet from the wall, half piling it on the next one, as she examined the floor closely.

  “His body was kept in here,” she announced as I entered.

  Vatia and Avitus had followed. Vatia pushed past me and gazed where Cassia pointed. “Blood,” he announced. “Not much. Dried.”

  Cassia addressed her words to me. “I suspect Rufus was carried here, already dead and … dismembered … and kept in this room until the building quieted. Then was arranged in Chryseis’s apartment.”

  I stilled. “How long in here?”

  “I don’t know. Nonus Marcianus might be able to discover this.”

  I worked through what she meant, my words coming slowly. “Then he wasn’t brought upstairs in the short time we were gone.”

  “No,” Cassia said. “I suspect Rufus was already here when we arrived looking for Chryseis.”

  “Which means the killer was in this room, while we were …”

  “Searching her apartment, yes.” Cassia spoke calmly, but her face was ashen, her eyes wide.

  “A pity you didn’t nab the fellow,” Vatia said, but he cleared his throat uncomfortably.

  “A pity?” Avitus demanded in surprise. “They were lucky they weren’t for the knife themselves. A man who can fell a gladiator won’t be easy to bring down.” His declaration faded as Vatia frowned at him. “Sir.”

  Vatia studied the splotches of dried blood. “Those could have been here for days.” He shrugged. “Or, you might be right, and the body was indeed stored here. Poor fellow.” He shook his head and left the bedchamber, Avitus and I on his heels. “Who lives in these rooms? Or are they vacant?”

  I thought of the small girl I’d seen in this doorway when I came to visit Chryseis earlier today. She’d ascended tonight after the mob dispersed instead of returning here.

  I kept this fact to myself. If the girl and her family had nothing to do with this, I didn’t want Vatia hauling them to the watchhouse to be locked away. I sensed he simply wanted someone to turn over to the cohorts for the crime, and he might not be too particular who it was.

  Even if the girl’s family did have a part in this killing, I didn’t want Vatia near them until I discovered the truth of it. They might have been bribed or forced to help, unwilling participants in a murder, and they’d face execution if so, the little girl included.

  Vatia had turned from me to Avitus. “Come to the watch house with me, Avitus. I want your report on what you saw here to go with mine. I need a reliable witness.”

  Avitus hadn’t seen much more than Vatia had, but while Avitus scowled in displeasure, he couldn’t disobey.

  Vatia gave me an abrupt good night and marched out. Avitus went with him, still scowling. We heard Vatia snap at someone on the stairs and then scuttling footsteps as the curious person retreated.

  Cassia bent and lifted a small object from the floor.

  “What is that?” I went to her, the scent of her simple woolen cloak soothing in this place of death.

  “A feather.” She held up a white broken quill that had long ago graced the wing of a bird. “From his helmet, I think.”

  I thought about the helmet that covered Rufus in the other room. It had a crest of white and black feathers, and now I realized what was wrong with it.

  “The helmet is a Thracian’s,” I said. “Rufus was a myrmillo.”

  Cassia’s brows went up. “Is the costume significantly different?”

  Her question told me she’d never been to gladiatorial games. “The helmets both have crests but are not exactly the same. The swords are quite different—the myrmillo carries a straight gladius, but the Thracian’s sword, the si
ca, is curved.”

  “Perhaps the killer did not know that. Or decided one costume was as good as another.”

  I rubbed a finger under my lower lip. “If he has fixed on gladiators, I’d think he’d be ardent about the games. He’d know the difference, and exactly which of Aemil’s gladiators took what role. I was almost always a secutor. Ajax also was a secutor, and his body was dressed correctly.”

  Cassia tucked the feather into her cloak. “Which makes me wonder where this person obtained the gear.”

  “If it is a man or woman wealthy enough to serve gilded food, they’d be wealthy enough to collect gladiator gear. But I still wonder why the mistake.”

  “When we find him, we will ask him.” Cassia stepped past me and out of the apartment, returning to Chryseis’s.

  I didn’t bother to tell Cassia she’d be nowhere near this killer when he was caught.

  Martolia huddled by Rufus’s now-covered body. When we entered, Martolia sprang up and hurled herself at me, latching on to me and burying her face in my chest.

  “Who is she?” Cassia asked softly as I awkwardly patted Martolia’s back.

  “Martolia. Merope’s sister.”

  “Ah.” Cassia came to her, gently unwinding her arms from my body. “I’m so sorry, Martolia. We will see you safely home.”

  Martolia turned to Cassia and flung her arms around her. Cassia started, but then gathered Martolia to her. “There now,” she murmured.

  I gestured for Cassia to wait with Martolia, and I left the room and took the stairs upward to find the family who’d once lived across the hall from Chryseis.

  Chapter 10

  Cold came at me as I reached the top of the building. The roofs on many insulae were full of holes, letting in wind and rain in the winter, heat in the summer. A chilly winter day meant icy dankness on the upper floors.

  Both apartments were occupied, I could tell by the noise behind the doors. I thumped on one of them.

  A woman yanked it open, sending me a belligerent glare that turned into a fearful recoil as she beheld me. I gazed past her at the family huddled around a flickering oil lamp but I did not see the girl among them. I held up my hand to reassure the woman and pulled the door shut for her.

  I stepped across the landing and rapped on the other door. No one answered, so I pushed it open.

  A smaller family gathered here. A woman and a man held a boy and the girl I’d seen at their sides, watching me as though they expected me to seize the lot of them and drag them away.

  I noticed they had no furniture, nothing at all in the single room. The apartment below had held a few sticks of it, and the pallets in that bedroom had been enough for a family of four.

  “When did you move up here?” I asked into the silence. The fact that they’d left their belongings below told me they meant to return, or else the move had been so recent—perhaps today—that they hadn’t had time to carry the furniture upstairs.

  The man cleared his throat. “A few days ago. The rent is cheaper.”

  He lied but I did not argue with him. “I saw your daughter downstairs earlier this morning.”

  The woman tugged the girl closer to her. The girl herself regarded me without alarm, as did the boy, but their parents were clearly terrified.

  “She does not understand we no longer live there,” the father said rapidly. “It is strange for her.”

  I pretended I accepted the answer. I could smell the parents’ fear, which was more than that of people worried I’d come to rob them. They’d abandoned the apartment downstairs swiftly for some reason, and I could guess why. That reason put them in great danger.

  “The building next door is even cheaper.” I indicated the shuttered window, which blocked the view of the insula down the hill. “You should move to it, perhaps tonight. I have a friend there—name of Avitus. Tell him Leonidas sent you, and that he should find an empty room to put you in.”

  I held the gaze of the man until I was certain he understood me. I was not good at being subtle, but I sensed that if I baldly told the man the killer who had paid or coerced them to leave their rooms below would return for him and his family, he and his wife would panic. Better for all that they calmly did what I suggested.

  The man nodded ever so slightly. I left them and went back downstairs.

  Cassia had led Martolia into the stairwell. Martolia had recovered somewhat but still held on to Cassia.

  I searched Chryseis’s apartment until I found keys then I joined Cassia on the landing, shut the door, and locked it, securing Rufus inside. The killer must have already picked the door’s lock before we’d arrived, preparing to haul Rufus’s body over, which was why we’d easily gained entrance.

  I started the long journey down the stairs, Cassia and Martolia behind me. At the bottom of the steps, I stopped and pounded on the shuttered window of the basketmaker’s shop. He and his wife and daughter would have seen more than anyone who’d come and gone that day. Even the coppersmith, whose back had been to the street as he’d beaten on his wares, would not have witnessed as much.

  After much hammering and banging, the exasperated wife at last pulled open the side door.

  “We’ve seen no one,” she answered testily to my question. “We’ve been asleep since we shut up shop. This is the first we’ve heard of any trouble at all. Murdered, you say? The gladiator?” She shook her head. “What that woman gets up to is beyond me.”

  She adamantly refused to say whether she’d seen anyone carrying anything inside the building. Once they closed the doors for the night, she proclaimed, they took to their beds in the back and were oblivious to whatever went on beyond their walls. They’d been awake when Cassia and I had arrived the first time, which meant they also would have been when the killer entered before us, but I recognized it would be futile to argue with her.

  The basketmaker peered from the shadows in the back at Cassia, a flicker of uneasiness in his eyes, before we departed and walked away into the now-dark street.

  We crossed to the Transtiberim to take Martolia home. Once inside the tiny apartment, I watched Merope and Gaius, who’d returned from the ludus, transform from excited welcome to shock to grief in the space of a moment.

  The three gathered into themselves to weep, holding on to one another for comfort.

  Cassia asked to remain with them while I went to the ludus to break the news to Aemil. “I can do more good here,” she explained. “I will walk back home with you when you are finished.”

  I left her puttering about the room, pouring wine and straightening things, while the three clung to each other in bewildered sorrow.

  I found Marcianus at the ludus. His face fell when I told him about Rufus, and Aemil flushed dark red with rage.

  “Who in the name of all the gods is doing this?” Aemil roared. “Are they seeking vengeance on me? News of this will be all over Rome in the morning. I’ll be shut down. Look what happened in Pompeii.”

  Not really the same thing, I wanted to point out, but a glance at Aemil told me to keep my silence. In Pompeii, a riot between rival towns had begun in the stands during gladiatorial games, which had resulted in the deaths of innocents. The official who’d planned the games had been exiled and gladiatorial combat banned in Pompeii for ten years.

  “If the consuls shut me down, I’ll be ruined,” Aemil moaned. “The spring games are in a matter of weeks.”

  He blustered, but I could see that the loss of his gladiators upset him, and not only because he could no longer sell their services. Aemil considered himself a paterfamilias, feeling a responsibility to all of us. I’d learned that over the years, but of course Aemil would never openly admit it.

  We again pulled his hand cart across the river, this time to the Aventine and the now quiet insula. A few of the curious inside peered around door frames but left us to the unnerving business of hauling Rufus’s body, covered in whatever of Chryseis’s blankets and linens we could find, down the stairs.

  Marcianus requested th
at we take Rufus to his office so he could examine him. Aemil growled that there was no point, but Marcianus, in his quiet way, won the argument, as usual.

  Aemil and I carted Rufus there, Marcia coming out to meet us. She cleared the space in the back room where Marcianus examined patients and helped Marcianus position the body parts without a qualm.

  Marcianus pointed out that Rufus too had been struck down from behind, before he ushered us out unceremoniously and began shuttering his windows for the night.

  Aemil rested an arm on his cart outside, disconsolate. “How do we stop this, Leonidas? Most madmen run about tearing at their hair and shrieking, and you step aside to avoid them. But this murderer is secretive and brutal. How do you avoid a person you can’t see?”

  Not waiting for an answer, Aemil lifted the handles of the cart and prepared to trundle it back to the ludus.

  “Is every man locked in?” I asked him as he started off.

  “They are. Snarling and foul-mouthed, but yes. Except for Regulus.” Aemil shot a glare back at me. “Find that bastard, Leonidas. Before he ends up a stack of bones.”

  Aemil stamped away, pulling the cart behind him, its wheels grating on the street.

  Cold wind swirled around me. I very much feared that Regulus was already dead, my old comrade and now my enemy the next victim in the killer’s crazed vendetta.

  When I reached Merope’s rooms in the Transtiberim, Cassia came down the stairs and out into the darkness to meet me.

  “They are asleep,” she murmured. “I mixed herbs in the wine to tire them. They’ll rest at least.”

  “Probably easier than Chryseis will.” I peered toward the river, wondering if the vigile captain had locked Chryseis in a room in his house or taken her to the Tullianum. “I am certain she did not kill Rufus. Her shock when she saw him was too great.”

  “Then we will have to find out who did.” Cassia’s voice held confidence, but then that confidence ebbed. “If we can. They are very cunning, whoever they are.”