“No one seems to know,” Cassia said.“There have been several attempts in the last days, but Priscus has shrugged them off.Celnus finally convinced him he should hire you to guard him on this journey.That’s how I found out about it.One of the servants from a family I know told me that Kephalos, the scribe, had gone to the Forum to search for a bodyguard.So I sought him out.It’s curious … Kephalos was pleased when I approached him.It seems that when he and Celnus convinced Priscus he needed a guard, he immediately thought of you.Or, as Kephalos told me, Priscus said,That gladiator who just retired.He looks sturdy.”
This fact was not surprising.Many who’d hired me to bodyguard asked for me by name.Those with much to lose wanted the top gladiators defending them.
“He’s told me very little about the attempts on his life.”I spoke in irritation.Some men could be too reticent about important things.
“Nothing has happened at home.Only when he goes out.A knife in the street.A falling block from the top of a tall insula.That one nearly killed a woman, but the senator pulled her to safety in time.”
“Good.”I meant that the attempts had been physical, and not poison, as with Floriana.Much easier for me to grab a knife-wielding assassin and hold him upside down than to puzzle out who had poisoned wine or food, and how and when.
“Priscus’s servants like him.He’s a reasonable man.”Cassia sounded admiring.
So, of course he was marked for death.Men who were monsters were cunning and careful, making them more difficult to eliminate.Kind men were too trusting.
“Priscus has no lictors,” I observed.No men whose job it was to carry a bundle of staves, merely symbolic these days, to signal that the man they accompanied had power.
“He says he’s not important enough, and finds lictors useless.”Cassia’s mouth quirked into a smile.“I like him too.”
I’d met reasonable and seemingly kind men before, benevolent when all was right in their world.But when things went wrong, they could turn into the monsters I’d mentioned.
Cassia hovered, re-straightening the corner of my blanket.Waiting for me to dismiss her, I realized.I’d have to grow used to that.
“Thank you,” I said.“Sleep well.”
Cassia shot me an unreadable glance then bowed her head and slipped away.I leaned against Priscus’s bedroom door, folded my arms, and pondered all Cassia had told me.When I exhausted that, I turned my thoughts to the change in my own life.
From one breath to the next, I’d become a different man.I could barely remember the youth I’d been before my arrest for murder and condemnation to the games.
I was no longer that lad.But I was also no longer Leonidas the Spartan, champion of the world.
I had no idea who I was now.I stared at the dark entrance to the atrium and hoped I would soon find out.
We stayedin Priscus’s large apartment three days waiting for the arrival of his goods.Cassia went out to the port with the other servants every morning to watch for the ship that was bringing them from Antioch.At home, Kephalos and Priscus, with argument on the scribe’s part, put together two caskets of gold coins to pay for the shipment.
Cassia had explained to me that the usual way for a man to buy cargo was to commission and pay for it beforehand, in an office.When the order arrived, it would be unloaded and taken to the purchaser’s warehouse, or wherever he directed it to go.Cassia was puzzled as to why Priscus hadn’t used an agent in the usual way, or had his son take care of the entire transaction, including its payment.Perhaps, she speculated, it was so valuable that the son hadn’t had enough funds in Halicarnassus for it.The costliness of this cargo was starting to worry me.
The locked chests stored in the tablinium also made me uneasy—they were a good target for a robber.Then again, the caskets were heavy, so a robber would have to bring much help to tote them away.Of course, if a gang broke into the house and killed all the inhabitants, they could take anything they liked.
Priscus grew more agitated as the days passed.He’d been calm enough when we’d arrived, but when his servants returned each afternoon telling him the ship had not yet appeared, he paced the atrium or the garden outside, or climbed to the second floor to stare from the arched window toward the harbor buildings, bright in the December sunshine.
On the third day, it rained, clouds and mist blotting out the view.The apartment was cold, barely heated by braziers Priscus would not go near.
Priscus turned to me from the upstairs window…I’d been watching to make sure no one sent an arrow through it into his brain.
“Do you think I am mad, Leonidas?”
Not a question one wants to answer if one needs to be paid.Priscus studied me as he waited, brown eyes anxious.
“I have not known you long enough to decide,” I said.
Priscus’s quick smile did not erase the worry in his eyes.“I never used to be mad, but I’m being driven to it.A great fortune is a burden, my friend.Everyone wants it, will do anything to obtain it.”
As I’d never owned more than what I’d won as prize money, which had gone very fast, most of it to Aemil, I could only regard him without expression.
“Having what you need and no more is best,” Priscus went on.“An excess of money is cold comfort when those you love are gone.”
His wife, he meant.Priscus must have been very fond of her.I wondered if he’d lavished expense on her tomb, praising her with a long inscription.
“You must be curious as to why I’ve journeyed to Ostia myself to fetch this cargo.”Priscus turned to the window, hands behind his trim back.He wore a tunic only, as usual when he was indoors, not much different from mine except for its costly fabric.
