A Gladiator's Tale

by Ashley Gardner

  Severina had been trying to seduce me, but I decided not to argue. I stood aside and gestured Merope out the door. Cassia wound her cloak around herself and stepped past me to descend the stairs. Whatever she’d thought of Merope’s last declaration was lost in the folds of wool.

  We headed toward the Aventine. Rome was at its height of activity, and the markets were thronged. Soon people would drift home to eat their midday meal and head to the baths, but at the moment, the crowds were thick.

  It was the middle of Parentalia now, and the occasional small procession of a family honoring their ancestors snaked through, blank death masks on the faces of the family members. Cassia and I would honor our deceased parents, and I would add Xerxes, who’d been as close as a brother, with a small feast on Feralia, the festival’s final day.

  Merope slipped away from us at the Basilica Julia, making nimbly for the Tiber and a bridge to take her home. I hoped she’d stay there.

  I led Cassia through the masses around the cattle market and on past the Circus Maximus, where races would be held at the beginning of the next month in honor of Mars.

  We reached the fountain of the three fishes on the Aventine. A right turn would lead us to Marcianus’s, but we went left to find the house of the vigiles, which lay near Chryseis’s insula.

  As it was midday, only an idle guard sat in the lower room of the house. When I strode inside without knocking, he nearly fell off his stool. He was up quickly, however, a sharp sword pointed at my chest.

  “Where is Vatia?” I demanded.

  “Asleep,” the guard growled. He was a different man from the guard I’d spoken to when I’d come to inquire about Chryseis, and less affable. “Out. I don’t care if you are Leonidas the Spartan. I’ll not let you wake him.”

  “Where is the man you brought in last night? The basketmaker?”

  The guard lowered his sword in confusion. “What do you want with him? We had to bring the whole family. His wife kicked up a big fuss.”

  “Where is he?” I leaned to the man, putting plenty of menace into my words.

  The guard backed a step, but perplexity overrode his fear. “You can’t talk to them. They don’t even speak a sensible language.”

  A weary male voice rolled from above as I moved in on the guard. “It’s all right. We have him in the cellar, Leonidas. Won’t say a word in any language at all.”

  Vatia clattered down the stairs, his tunic rumpled and his face unshaved but his boots in place. “Truth to tell, I’d be glad to be rid of the man, so if you can make him talk we can either turn him loose or send him to the cohorts.”

  He reached the ground floor, combing fingers through his thick hair as though trying to force it into some sort of order, and unbolted a door at the back of the room. Vatia waved at the guard to lead us down a narrow set of stone steps, he bringing up the rear.

  I suppressed a shudder as I descended, Cassia close behind me. I didn’t like underground spaces, having spent too much time first in prison and then in cells deep inside amphitheatres, waiting for my turn to battle on the sand. Not good memories.

  The cellar was larger than the house above us, but that did not make me feel any better. A wide central hall ran its length with cells on either side, complete with the stink of sewage and unbathed prisoners.

  The basketmaker and his wife and daughter had been crammed together into a cell at the far end of the corridor. The guard unlocked the door, holding his sword ready, but the three inside were not about to rush him and try to make their escape.

  The wife glared at us, though the daughter huddled in the corner, and the basketmaker sat dejectedly on the floor, staring at nothing. When the wife spied Cassia, she stiffened.

  Cassia stepped around me and began speaking before Vatia or the guard could force the prisoners to their feet. Rapid and fluent Aeolian Greek flowed from her lips. The basketmaker jerked his head up, eyes rounding as he recognized her.

  “What’s she saying?” Vatia asked me in bewilderment.

  I shrugged. “I don’t speak Greek.”

  Neither did the guard, obviously, who watched Cassia with a blank expression.

  When Cassia finished, the basketmaker began to weep. Broken sentences tumbled from his mouth, his hands moving shakily. The daughter drew into an even tighter ball, hiding her face in her knees.

  The wife, on the other hand, sprang to her feet and started shouting in Aeolian, first at her husband, then at Cassia, then her husband again.

  Vatia strode forward. He carried no sword but balled his big fists, which could easily break bones.

  “What is he telling you?” he demanded of Cassia.

  Cassia turned to him, shrinking slightly in on herself, a stance she took when she wanted to appease another. “He says …”

  The wife lunged desperately at Cassia, but Vatia seized the woman by the tunic and jerked her back.

  Cassia tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and continued, “The basketmaker says he is ashamed. He saw a man go into the insula, who he now realizes was the killer. He thought nothing of it—men visit tenants of the insula all the time. The basketmaker is cut up inside for not understanding that the man was a murderer, and realizes that if he’d stopped him, he might have saved the life of another.”

  The wife hung silently in Vatia’s grip, her mouth dropping open. Cassia did not look at her, keeping her gaze on Vatia.

  “Oh, yes?” Vatia growled. “Why didn’t he say so when we came for him? Or why didn’t she?” He shook the woman.

  “She didn’t know,” Cassia said quickly. “She wasn’t certain what her husband saw.” Cassia asked the basketmaker a question, and he replied without hesitation, tears in his eyes. “He did not know how to explain, and he was confused,” Cassia told Vatia. “He doesn’t understand much Latin.”

  The daughter now peered fearfully from her knees. The wife continued to stare at Cassia, lips parted. I shook my head at her ever so slightly, and the woman snapped her mouth closed.

  “Will he swear that on his ancestors?” Vatia asked in irritation. “I’m not giving the cohorts a man who weeps and can’t answer their questions. They’ll torture him and throw him out. If he can describe the man he saw …”

  I read sympathy in Vatia. A man with a wife and daughter who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time would not drive him to cruelty. He’d prefer a real culprit with the word murderer branded on his forehead, carrying the exact evidence to convict him, to stop by the vigiles’ house to give himself up. I sensed that Vatia preferred fighting fires to arresting people.

  Cassia again spoke to the basketmaker. I knew the man was far more involved than what Cassia had told Vatia, but he’d be safe as long as Vatia didn’t understand him. If the wife and daughter remained silent, all might be well.

  “He describes a large man, broad of shoulder,” Cassia said after she’d finished her chat. “With a large nose and wiry black hair, quite a lot of it. This man entered the insula alone before the eleventh hour, but the basketmaker doesn’t remember seeing him come out. He was busy in the back of the shop. As he says, many come and go from the insula.”

  “What about them?” Vatia jerked his chin at the wife and daughter. “What did they see?”

  “Nothing at all. They were quite focused on their tasks, as it was a very busy day.”

  Vatia heaved a sigh that came from the bottom of his boots. “Any number of men might have large noses and a full head of hair, but at least it’s something.”

  “Others have described this man,” I put in. “He is very likely the killer of both Ajax and Rufus.”

  As Vatia gave a signal to his guard to lead the three prisoners out, I suddenly wondered if the basketmaker, or Volteius the armorer, or his apprentice Albus, would recognize the big man if he’d shaved off his memorable head of hair. Would he then resemble Severina’s lead bodyguard?

  “I believe you,” Vatia said, cutting through my pondering. “But searching every street for a man with a p
ile of hair and a big nose will be tedious. My commander may tell me to leave it. The dead men were only …”

  He broke off uncomfortably, stopping short of saying They were only gladiators.

  Scowling, Vatia stomped out after his guard. I took Cassia’s arm and led her after them.

  Once we were all back on the street, the basketmaker lost no time in herding his wife and daughter home. They hurried close together, the basketmaker peering fearfully over his shoulder at us before they rounded a corner and were lost to sight.

  I thanked Vatia for his help—he grunted a response but appeared relieved that he didn’t have to deal with the basketmaker and family any longer.

  I turned our steps to Marcianus’s, wanting to seek his opinion of my ideas. I needed his steady head in all this.

  Marcianus was in but seeing a patient, a woman who jabbered at him in his back room. Marcianus’s calming tones rolled to us, cut off by the woman insisting she needed a charm to heal her festering hand, not Marcianus’s paste. We glimpsed Marcia in another room, grinding something in a stone mortar, probably the concoction Marcianus was trying to prescribe the woman.

  I sat on the bench just inside the cool front room to wait, Cassia sinking down beside me.

  “What did the basketmaker really say?” I asked her in a low voice.

  Cassia glanced outside the open door to make certain we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “He was paid to let the man into the building,” she murmured. “Paid quite a lot, though the basketmaker did not specify how much. This man came not long before we arrived the first time. He was lugging a large bag, and paid the basketmaker and his wife to say nothing. The basketmaker took the money, believing the man simply there for a secret liaison. This happens all the time, and a few coins are always welcome. When the basketmaker learned about the murder, he realized the man who’d paid them was the killer, or at least he’d lugged in Rufus’s body after the fact. The basketmaker feared that if anyone found out he took the man’s coin he’d be arrested as part of the conspiracy and possibly his entire family condemned for it. Hence, his sudden trip to Ostia. When no one came after him, he thought it safe to return to Rome, but a vigile saw him and Captain Vatia hauled him in for questioning.”

  If the basketmaker had no friends among the magistrates, then he’d been right to worry about himself and his family.

  “This is not what you told Vatia,” I said quietly.

  Cassia moved her shoulders in a shrug. “Does the man deserve to die because he welcomed a few sestertii from the wrong man? Does his wife or daughter deserve to be sold into slavery for it? I told Vatia what he needed to know.”

  I studied her, a small woman with a crooked nose and soft eyes. “That was good of you.”

  Another shrug. “The basketmaker is not a bad man.”

  “And he speaks Aeolian Greek.”

  “It was pleasant to hear it again.”

  There was a faint quaver in her voice. Cassia probably hadn’t spoken much of that language since her father had died.

  I rested my hand on hers. Cassia turned her head and met my gaze a brief moment, one that revealed her loneliness, which she covered every day with her determination to get on with life. She bared herself in that one instant, before she blinked, shutting out her inner self as thoroughly as she swathed her body in her cloak.

  I squeezed her hand gently and released it.

  Running footsteps drew my attention outside. I spied Septimius, the bulky gate guard from the ludus, approaching Marcianus’s place in a hurried shuffle.

  I assumed he was rushing to bid Marcianus to tend an injured gladiator, but when Septimius saw me, he ducked inside and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Leonidas, thank the gods. You weren’t home so I came to tell Marcianus to help me find you. Aemil is asking for you. Bellowing for you, more like.”

  I was on my feet. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Regulus is gone.” Septimius rested his fists on his hips, trying to catch his breath. “He vanished last night and didn’t turn up this morning. Aemil is livid. And afraid he’s going to be a corpse like the others. Come and calm Aemil down before he beats us all.”

  Chapter 21

  I left Cassia at Marcianus’s and jogged with Septimius back to the ludus.

  By the time we reached it, I could hear Aemil shouting. He usually ran the school with gruff efficiency, but today, his rage filled the space like wind-tossed waves. He was, at the moment, beating the second gate guard with the flat of his wooden sword.

  “Leonidas!” Aemil broke off and charged at me. I prepared myself for him to strike me with Nemesis, but he halted an arm’s-length away. “This lout says he never saw Regulus go. But he must have let him out, the oaf.”

  I was happy I’d persuaded Cassia to remain behind. She’d argued, but I hadn’t wanted her near a furious Aemil. He was a dangerous man who kept himself contained by great effort. Marcianus had agreed with me, and Cassia had consented, reluctantly, to stay.

  “I never saw him.” Plinius, the second gate guard, lifted his bruised face. “I swear it on all the gods. On my ancestors.”

  “Regulus could easily have slipped out,” I told Aemil. “He knew how.”

  “I know he did!” Aemil’s bellow betrayed fear behind his anger. “Where would he go, Leonidas? You knew him better than anyone.”

  Which was hardly at all. “Was he locked in his cell?”

  Aemil’s eyes flared with rage, the different colors of them blazing. “Of course he was. I took his lock picks too. The one you threw away from him and the other three I found tucked under his mattress.”

  “Even a wooden stick could have helped him,” I said. “He’s good at locks.”

  “I should have put a cobra outside,” Aemil snarled. “Find him, Leonidas. Before he becomes a pile of gladiator parts. He can’t fight for me like that. He’s my best, and I’ve already promised him to the games at the equinox. The fee is too much to lose.”

  Aemil blustered about the money, but I knew this was to cover his terrible worry of finding another of the men he’d trained, fed, clothed, and cared for as the victim of a brutal murderer.

  “Do any of the other gladiators know where he might have gone?”

  “Hmm, I never thought to ask a one of them.” Aemil glared at me, his sarcasm cutting. “None have any idea, useless pillocks. He never confided in anyone but you.”

  Regulus had rarely told me anything personal about himself. We’d become drinking comrades, turning to each other because it was better than drinking alone. I’d destroyed that comradeship when I’d refused to release him to death during our last bout.

  Had Regulus sought that death by stepping squarely into danger? Or, more likely, did he think so much of himself that he believed he could best the killer? Find him when I could not?

  I strode past Aemil to Regulus’s cell. The last of Xerxes’s drawings were cheerful reminders of his sense of humor and brought a distracted pain to my heart.

  Regulus lived simply, as all gladiators did. His cell contained a bed, a stool, spare tunics, and a small box of his belongings. Inside that, I found a rope belt, a rough-carved statue of a god I couldn’t identify, and a smaller box. Opening this, I lifted out a gold earring, delicate and masterfully crafted. Only one, and it would have been costly.

  “Lady must have given him that,” Aemil said, gazing over my shoulder. “Or he stole it from her.”

  I studied the earring. Three gold hoops, wire-thin, hung from a clasp, with tiny chips of emeralds decorating each tier. I knew where I’d seen a similar style, and recently.

  I clenched the earring in my hand and marched to the practice area. “Bring all the men out here,” I told Aemil.

  He bristled at my command but went back into the cells and barked orders. Most of the gladiators were already in the training yard and drifted my way in curiosity.

  “Regulus’s woman gave this to him.” I dangled the earring once all were assembled, the gold
and emeralds flashing spangles of light. “Can anyone tell me who that woman is?”

  Most shrugged, neither knowing nor caring. Praxus, his arm in a sling, bent to peer at it. “Woman in a villa on a hill.”

  “Domitiana?” I asked sharply. She’d worn earrings like these the night she’d hosted me and Herakles at her supper. Regulus had confessed he’d been to her, but I had to be sure he’d gone there again tonight.

  “No.” The sharp answer came from Herakles. “Domitiana likes only me.”

  Guffaws sounded behind him. “Oh, she loves you, barbarian,” one gladiator laughed. “She’d never stray.”

  Herakles swung on him, and the man backed a step. “She knows what I do to bitches who cross me.”

  “Shut your gob, Herakles,” Aemil growled at him. “You’ll not touch a highborn woman, because I won’t save you when they drag you to your crucifixion.”

  “Not Domitiana.” Praxus’s scoffing tones broke through as Herakles subsided to a glower. “Not at that villa. On a hill in the city.”

  “Which hill?” I stepped to Praxus, meeting his unnervingly light blue eyes. “The Caelian?”

  He nodded with certainty. “That is what Regulus said.”

  My headache increased as my blood pounded. Was Severina the killer after all? Why then, had she decided to spare me last night?

  “How do you know this, Praxus?” Aemil demanded. “And why didn’t you speak up before?”

  Praxus pulled at one of his ears. “I hear all talking. They think I am the stupid oaf from the north and don’t understand. And you didn’t ask before. You just shouted Where is Regulus? Tell me now. I don’t know where he is. But I know he likes this woman on the Caelian who gives him gifts.”

  “Thank you, Praxus,” I said. “You’ve helped much.”

  He’d known about Domitiana in the first place, I remembered. I observed his ingenuous expression, the man young and confident, believing himself ready to take on the toughest gladiators.