I had no wish to be a bone between this woman and Rufus. I gave her no farewell, only turned from her for the stairs.
The open doorway across from Chryseis’s darkened, and a girl of about ten summers peeped out. The smell of something boiling wafted behind her. The girl had flyaway hair and a too-thin body, and she blinked rapidly when she saw me.
I gave the girl a polite nod and started downward. Behind me, Chryseis made a snort of disgust and slammed her door.
The girl was still watching me when I reached the next landing, staring at me with curious dark eyes. I nodded at her again then descended, my footsteps falling in with the rhythm of the coppersmith’s hammer below.
I thanked the woman in the basket shop, her husband and daughter remaining hunched over their work, and walked on, heading for the Transtiberim, in search of Rufus’s mistresses.
The Pons Sublicius, an ancient bridge, crossed the Tiber near the Porta Triemina, a gate through which I’d departed Rome on a journey to Ostia Attica not long ago, escorting a retired senator.
The bridge had pilings of stone but the structure itself was made of wood, rickety and old, often repaired. As I crossed, I had a good view of the Pons Aemilius not far upstream—an arched stone bridge that was far more substantial.
The Transtiberim swallowed me as I stepped off the other end of the Pons Sublicius. Its many buildings blocked the sight of the river, and also of the nearby Naumachia, a manmade lake for the staging of mock naval battles.
The popina just off the Via Aurelia had lettering on its outside walls and what was meant to be a Greek painting of battling heroes. A tiny staircase led upward beside the open counter, and I climbed it on the chance it directed me to the right apartment.
I heard squealing female laughter as I reached the first floor, and I knocked with my fist on the rickety door.
Footsteps pattered toward it. “Who’s there?” a woman cried, far more eagerly and curiously than Chryseis had.
“Leonidas. Friend of Rufus.”
The flimsy door shook as it was pulled open, and a small young woman with uncombed brown hair grinned at me. “It really is Leonidas the Spartan,” she all but shouted as she opened the door all the way. “Welcome, Leonidas. Our humble home is honored.”
The home was truly humble. One room with uneven stone walls and a slanted stone floor greeted me, the only light and air coming from a window set high in the wall. In this dim interior were a table and stools and a single wide pallet.
Another young woman with similar features to the first jumped up from the table, and a slim young man sat cross-legged on the pallet, a jug in his hand. I saw no sign of Rufus.
“Welcome,” the second woman said. “Gaius, turn loose that wine and pour Leonidas a cup.”
The first young woman took me by the arm and led me to the table. “We have bread, freshly baked. And grapes if Gaius hasn’t eaten them all. He is our cousin but thinks he’s our paterfamilias, the brat.”
I allowed her to sit me down. The second woman poured me wine from the jug Gaius had readily handed her while the first shoved a much-mended plate of bread at me and a basket that held a few grapes.
“I am looking for Rufus,” I managed to say.
The first woman’s face blossomed into a smile. “Did his wife send you? If so, we won’t tell. I’m Merope, by the way. She’s Martolia, my sister.” She jerked her thumb at the second young woman who gave me a good-natured nod.
I took a polite sip of the wine, which was sour and oily tasting. “I visited Chryseis, but she did not know where Rufus was.”
The two girls burst out laughing. “You met Chryseis? Do you understand now why Rufus likes to stay with us? He’ll break himself to pieces on her.”
“I think he likes variety,” Gaius said quietly from the pallet.
Martolia threw a shriveled grape at him. “Misery-maker. Rufus arrives morose and leaves much happier.”
“He’s a good man, is Rufus,” Merope told me. “When Gaius was run down by a cart and broke his arm, Rufus carried him to a physician and paid the man to set his bone and give him concoctions to make him sleep. Show him your arm, Gaius.”
Gaius obediently lifted a thin arm that looked whole and healthy. “I never said he wasn’t kind. Just that he could leave his wife if he was that unhappy with her.”
“He doesn’t, because she has money.” Martolia resumed her seat at the table and leaned toward me. “Much, much money.”
Chryseis had described the sisters asflat-chested, gnarled-haired nobodies. The two were thin, showing that a feast of bread and grapes was rare, and their hair hung in unkempt hanks. They wore tunics that were far more modest than Chryseis’s stola but much mended, like their plain ceramic plate.
For all that, the sisters bathed me in smiles and offered me what little they had. They were as excited to see me as if I’d been a wealthy patrician gracing their tiny home.
“Chryseis has money?” I asked in bewilderment as Martolia poured me more wine. “She lives high in an insula on the Aventine. Rufus has been trying to persuade her into a better place.”
