I heard a step behind me and turned quickly.
“You have a message for Tertius Vestalis Felix?” a voice came to me from the shadow of the passageway.
A man stepped into the moonlight and the feeble flicker of the oil lamp resting beside the atrium’s square pool of water. He was tall, with a long face, a large, fleshy nose, and a thick quantity of black hair.
We studied each other for a long moment. He took me in, his nostrils flaring as he realized who I was, and what I knew.
I lunged at him at the same time he came at me. We grappled on the mosaic, on top of nymphs dancing under spreading trees. He was big and strong, but I was fast, skilled, and experienced.
I soon had him in a headlock, as I’d done with Herakles, ready to kick his legs out from under him. I’d beat him senseless then haul him to Vatia or maybe to the Praetorian Guard on the Palatine.
Something sharp pricked my arm. The stab was not deep, but in the next moment, my arm grew numb, and my torso and legs quickly followed. I kept the man in my grip until my knees buckled and I fell to the floor.
As I landed on my back, he stood over me holding what looked like a comb, the kind that held lady’s hair. The poison, whatever it was, must have been on its tines.
The atrium blurred, then the man bent to me, his long face and thick hair blotting out the silvery moonlight and the idyllic paintings of a family enjoying their leisure in a perfect garden.
Chapter 24
When I swam awake once more, I found myself flat on my back on a hard slab, the dank chill of stone walls around me, no light anywhere. I might be in a tomb.
My heart beat wildly as that thought took hold. I’d lived in cells a long time, but I’d known that someone would eventually open the door and let me out, even if that release might lead to my death. It wasn’t the same as being walled in.
I needed to rise and discover if I were entombed or simply in a room with tightly shuttered windows.
I tried to swing my legs over the side of the slab and realized I couldn’t move. I could twitch fingers and toes, open and close my mouth, and blink my eyes, but not much else.
“Hades,” I muttered. At least my voice worked. When my throat ceased being so dry, maybe I could shout for help.
“Who is that?” The croak came from my right, not far away. I sensed another presence—smelled him, in truth. The rank stink of sweat and urine didn’t rise only from me.
I recognized the snarl. “Regulus?”
“Oh, the luck of all the gods is upon me.” Regulus’s sardonic drawl cut the air. His voice was hoarse and weak, but his anger was plenty strong. “I’m penned up for my last day on earth with the great Leonidas. Fortuna loves me.”
“Last day?”
“I wasn’t thrown down here so I could be garlanded and fed sweetmeats and honey. That prick, Silvanus … pricked me … and dragged me to this place underneath his master’s house.”
“Silvanus.” I worked through my confused thoughts. “The slave with the big nose?”
“He’s a freedman, but stayed on to laud and worship his master.”
“And murder for him,” I murmured.
“The brilliant Leonidas has figured that out, has he? I am next into the pot, unless they decide to start with you. I hope they do. If I help them butcher you, maybe they’ll let me go.”
Regulus’s voice was strained, bluster covering fear. He must not be able to move any better than I could.
I smelled, over the odor of both of us, the distinctive stench of death. Muted, as though it had faded over the last days, but there. I had a feeling I’d found the place where Ajax and Rufus had been felled before they’d been taken to the warehouse to be cut to pieces. Silvanus must have dragged them here after they’d feasted with Severina for the killing blow so the other servants and Severina wouldn’t be aware of it.
“They have no reason to kill you,” I said to Regulus.
“I disagree. Silvanus stabbed me with his poisoned comb as I left his mistress’ bedchamber. Rufus was probably sticking it to her as well, and we know you were.” Regulus huffed a laugh. “Though if the lofty Vestalis is murdering every man who ruts his wife, he’ll have to chop up half of Rome.”
“Rufus wasn’t her lover. Neither was I.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Regulus returned. “Silvanus is a madman, and so is Tertius Vestalis Felix.” He spat the name.
“Maddened.” I stared up into the darkness. “Not mad.”
“What does that mean?”
I told Regulus, my tongue thick in my dry mouth, the theory Cassia and I had formulated that Ajax and Herakles had raped and murdered Vestalis’s family, and Ajax’s death was Vestalis’s revenge.
“Huh,” Regulus grunted when I finished. “Then why kill Rufus, and now us?”
“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “It’s one idea.”
“I spit on your ideas,” Regulus rumbled. “Take a dump on them too.”
“Right now, I’m not worried about why.” I tried to move my legs again, but only my toes obliged. “I’m more interested in how to get away.”
“At least you haven’t lost all your senses. What are your wonderful ideas on how to escape?”
“I wonder what poison he used.” I ran my fingers over the slab I rested on, finding rough-hewn stone. “Marcianus would know.”
“Yes, the chattering medicus would be useful about now. Except they’d probably poison him too.”
“I plan to ask him.”
Regulus groaned. “You always did decide you were master of life and death. No matter how much someone wants to die, you spare him because you think it’s best.”
An old argument. “Do you want to die now?”
“No,” Regulus snapped. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
Regulus made a growling noise and returned to muttering to himself.
He had at least relieved my mind that we’d not been put into a tomb. We were in a room in the cellars of Vestalis’s Caelian Hill home. That gave me hope. The walls might be stone, but wooden doors would break. Regulus and I were two of the strongest gladiators in all of Rome, and Regulus was skilled in picking locks. A mere door would not pen us in.
If only we could move.
Regulus had been down here longer, probably since last night after he’d slipped from the ludus and lain with Severina for a while, so the poison would wear through him first. He was a very good fighter. Even if he chose to save only himself, his engagement with any guards would give me a chance to escape with him.
But not until the feeling came back to my body.
We lay in darkness for a long time. An hour might have gone by since I’d been caught. Maybe two. When the moon set, the city would be fully dark. The lanterns of delivery wagons would light the lower streets, but no wagons would come to the top of this hill near its prestigious villas.
I had regained some movement of my feet and hands when the door scraped open. An oil lamp stabbed light into my now-sensitive eyes, and Regulus grunted a curse.
“I want to see Vestalis,” I said clearly.
The burly Silvanus’s horse-like face came out of the shadows, the lamplight mottling his skin.
“He doesn’t talk to gladiators.”
The statement wasn’t true, as I’d had several conversations with the man.
“Tell him I want to speak to him about Ajax and Herakles. The tribesmen from Pannonia.”
Silvanus went motionless, the flame sputtering in the oil. “You know nothing of Pannonia.”
His Latin was perfect, with no accent other than that of Rome. He was no foreigner, but Roman born and bred.
“I know what happened to Vestalis’s family,” I went on. “I know he blamed Ajax. I understand why. I’d have wanted to kill him too.”
Silvanus fell silent. Regulus breathed heavily from the other bunk, only a few feet from mine.
After a long moment, the bulk that was Silvanus
turned and stalked out of the cell. He slammed the door and scraped bolts across it from the other side.
I’d seen, in the flicker of the lamp, that the door was simple, two wooden cross pieces over vertical boards. The room was shored up with bricks rather than stone, unfinished. It could have been meant as a storage room, or maybe whoever had originally built this house had put in his own cells for disobedient slaves.
“The door is flimsy,” I said to Regulus. “You are good at opening doors.”
“Yes, when I can move,” he snapped.
My feet were now free of the paralyzing poison, but that didn’t help me when I couldn’t shift my legs. Feeling had returned to my hands, and my wrists tingled.
“Did you eat or drink anything before you were carried down here?” I asked.
“Of course I did. Severina showered me with food and drink. I was dizzy and drunk after I climbed out of her bed, which is why I couldn’t fight that lout, Silvanus. I’ve been down here ever since.”
His food or wine must have been laced, not with poison, but with some kind of soporific. Once Regulus was staggering with that, in addition to his lethargy after lying with Severina, Silvanus had struck with the poison, coated on the tines of the comb, possibly snake venom. Again, Marcianus would know.
I’d taken no food and only a little wine with Vestalis earlier. Maybe both poisons together kept the men immobilized and unable to fight when Silvanus killed them.
“Was any of the food gilded?” I asked.
“What? Yes—the cakes and some of the fruit. Stupid waste of gold. Why?”
I did not answer. Ajax had eaten his last meal here then, prepared by the same cook, Rufus as well. Rufus must have accepted Severina’s invitation, wanting to be with a rich woman who’d actually bestow the luxury on him that Chryseis would not. Or possibly Silvanus had lured him to dine with her, promising payment.
I wondered if Severina knew what had happened to them, and Regulus. Possibly not. She was not the most observant of women of anything outside her own world. I also wondered why my food had not been doctored or gilded, why I’d been allowed to leave freely. But Vestalis had enjoyed speaking with me, so he’d said. Perhaps he’d instructed Silvanus to spare me.
I could feel much of my arms again. Once I regained my strength, I would rip the door from its hinges if I had to and find my way out.
Before more sensation returned, the door scraped open again. Silvanus stepped inside, the stooped Vestalis shuffling behind him.
“This is the other?” Vestalis asked.
“Yes, lord.” Silvanus flashed the lamp briefly at Regulus, who glared back at him. I couldn’t see much of Regulus, just a gladiator in the dark.
Vestalis spat on Regulus. Regulus rumbled his fury but remained immobilized.
“No,” I said. “This is Regulus. He’s never been to Pannonia.”
Vestalis swung to me, his dark eyes widening in surprise. “Leonidas? Why is he here?” Vestalis demanded of Silvanus. “I said he wasn’t to be touched. He is an honorable man.”
Regulus snorted his derision, but Silvanus’s face didn’t move. “He came to stop us carrying out what we need to do,” Silvanus said. “Your ancestors will only be appeased when the murderers of your ladies have been slain.”
“Then we must do it soon,” Vestalis said. “We only have a few days.”
“A few days for what?” Regulus demanded, but I thought I knew.
“Feralia,” I said. “The final day of Parentalia. By the end of the festival, they want the deaths to be avenged. As their gift to his wife and daughter.”
The way Rufus’s and Ajax’s bodies had been cut up and displayed made more sense now, in a way. They were offerings positioned in the same fashion a person might put together a plate of oranges and walnuts, neatly stacked for the ancestors’ enjoyment.
Tears glittered on Vestalis’s cheeks. “It shall be so.”
“Regulus was not one of the men who killed them.” I strove to keep my voice steady. Vestalis should understand this—he was acquainted with Herakles—but he seemed to have moved beyond reason. “Silvanus made a mistake. He made a mistake with Rufus too. Rufus was Roman-born, not of the Quadi.”
Vestalis’s brow knit in confusion. “Is this true?” he asked Silvanus.
“It was not a mistake,” Silvanus returned quickly. “If I killed only the two Quadi, the deaths might be traced to your door. But if random gladiators die, no one will suspect anything of you. They believe it is a madman who hates gladiators, maybe another gladiator himself. You retain your honor and gain your vengeance.”
Vestalis did not argue with Silvanus’s logic, which chilled me. Vestalis stepped toward me, his expression one of great sorrow.
“Must Leonidas die too?” he asked Silvanus. “He is a good man.”
Again, Regulus snorted, but the sound was softer this time.
Vestalis halted very close to me. I’d regained control of my arms now—I could reach out and trap him in a death grip, use him as leverage to free us.
But if I did so, Silvanus would have time to draw a weapon. I saw nothing in his hands, but he might have another poison-dipped comb with him, or some other thing he could scratch us with. I had no doubt another dose would kill us.
“The more gladiators found dead, the less likely you will be blamed,” Silvanus explained to Vestalis.
Except people had noticed Silvanus with his distinctive face and hair, and it was only a matter of time before a vigile or a cohort matched Silvanus with the description the basketmaker had given Vatia. The apprentice, Albus, of the good memory, and Volteius the armorer, and the family who’d lived across the landing from Chryseis, would know him too.
I kept this to myself because I did not want Silvanus, a loyal servant and merciless killer, to hunt those innocents down.
“Did you cut them up in Chryseis’s warehouse?” I asked.
Silvanus started, surprised I’d realized that. “It is a large space, not much used.”
“And you’d have an excuse to be in the area, as Vestalis is having a warehouse built there.”
“My wife is,” Vestalis rasped.
I wondered why, but that was beside the point. “An easy place to lug things in and out of with a cart or large baskets—no one would question such a thing at a warehouse. But why leave Ajax in the Subura?”
Silvanus shrugged, his eyes glittering in the lamplight. “He loved the whores there. Why not give him to them? Besides, there was a shrine to Juno at the end of that lane, on the other side of the wall. It was an offering.”
I hadn’t known about the shrine, but it made a sort of twisted sense. “How did you lure Ajax here? He wasn’t fond of patrician women.”
Silvanus took on a smug expression. “He came readily enough when I explained my master had taken a fancy to him and wanted to reward him for his prowess in the games.”
“Ajax.” Vestalis spat on the floor. “It is an abomination that he used such a name. Silvanus thought that if I took a rich wife, I could live out my days in comfort, but it has not been a comfort. I am still alone and grieving. Then, at this past Saturnalia, when Domitiana persuaded me to join her at the games at the Circus Gai, I saw them. The men who’d broken into my house and dragged out my wife and daughter. Parading proudly through the sand, lauded and cheered as champions, given the names of heroes. Ajax and Herakles. It was monstrous.”
“So you took your revenge,” I said quietly.
Vestalis had moved even closer to me, and Silvanus edged behind him watchfully. They believed me immobile, which was to my advantage.
“Silvanus explained how I could,” Vestalis said. “We would do it for them. Those two, killed and offered at Feralia to appease the spirits of my poor wife and my beautiful daughter. She would have married the next year.”
I understood his grief and his outrage. Ajax and Herakles had come to the ludus full of anger—at the Romans for invading their territory and then capturing them, at Aemil, at all of us. The
n they’d realized they could release their aggression in the arena and be cheered and acclaimed, which had rendered them arrogant and conceited. Herakles even now showed no remorse for what he’d done to Vestalis’s wife and daughter.
I flicked my gaze to Silvanus. “Why would you kill for him?”
Silvanus answered with scorn. “I have worked in the house of my master since I was born. His family raised me, then he freed me. I will avenge his lady wife and daughter as I would my own mother and sister.”
“I had no sons,” Vestalis said, as though this explained things. Silvanus, the loyal freedman, had done what a son would do.
“Then you aren’t truly alone,” I said. Throughout the man’s loss and grief, Silvanus had been at his side, looking after him. Going so far as to murder for him.
Vestalis shook his head. “It is not the same.”
Silvanus would never be anything more than a servant, he meant, no matter what the man had done for him.
Silvanus did not seem upset by Vestalis’s statement. He nodded, as though Vestalis spoke wisdom.
Vestalis now stood very close to me. I felt the brush of his tunic, woven of the finest linen, smelled the expensive oils on his skin.
I lunged for him. As I’d hoped, Silvanus immediately sprang forward. He shoved Vestalis out of my reach, and I closed my hands around Silvanus’s shoulders and jerked him down to me.
Vestalis let out a rasping shout and rushed for the door, no doubt to summon help.
“No you don’t, old man,” Regulus growled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Regulus grip Vestalis by the tunic, his hand even in a paralyzed body strong enough to halt the elderly man’s steps.
That left me to grapple with Silvanus. I could have bested him at my full strength, but while my arms mostly worked, I was still immobile, and he had command of all his limbs.
I twisted his wrist as he reached for a weapon, found the knife in his belt, and closed my hand around it. Silvanus jerked wildly in my grasp and the knife, coming free, fell from my still-clumsy fingers, clattering to the floor. Regulus jeered.
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