“Oh, yes. Quite a bit older. Helvius said Severina loves to host banquets, the more lavish, the better. Usually when her husband is away.”
I stilled. “Does she invite gladiators?”
“Gladiators, charioteers, actors, musicians …” Cassia chewed a tiny portion of her bread. “Severina enjoys being entertained as much as her mother does.”
I turned my wine cup on the table. “I have known one or two women—gladiators—who’d be able to kill Ajax and saw up his body. But I am guessing the pampered wife of a proconsul could not.”
“Helvius says Severina is a rather small woman. I asked.”
“But she could hire men to do it for her.”
“She also might coerce some of her lovers to do such a thing. Severina is apparently quite beautiful.”
Ajax had been vain and pompous. It was not difficult to imagine a beautiful, rich woman enticing him to her side and stuffing him with a sumptuous meal before signaling her hired men to kill him—but for what reason? Was it simply another form of entertainment for her?
“We must find out if Ajax visited her,” I stated.
Cassia reached for her tablets, which were never far from her hands. “It will not be easy. I do not know any servants in Severina’s house, though perhaps Helvius could sneak me inside.”
“No,” I said immediately.
Cassia didn’t bother to look up. “I thought you would object.”
“If this Severina likes gladiators, then I could somehow gain an invitation to her home.”
Now Cassia pinned me with her stare. “I believe that a dangerous idea. She might like tokillgladiators.”
“Or perhaps she wished only to kill Ajax,” I argued. “He might have angered her. Maybe Severina grew annoyed with him for going to lupinari in the Subura. For betraying her, in her eyes. She punished him, and left him in the Subura to humiliate him. If she simply enjoyed murdering gladiators, I’m certain we would have heard of it before this.”
“That is true,” Cassia conceded.
I finished off my bread and washed it down with more wine as I pondered. “What if her husband killed him out of jealousy? Came home too soon and found Ajax there?”
Cassia tapped her stylus to her cheek. “Helvius told me that her husband doesn’t pay much attention to Severina. She’s his second wife—he married her for her money and her family connections, as he didn’t have much wealth of his own. As long as Severina stays close to home, the husband gives her free rein. Or so it seems.”
“Still, a man walking into his wife’s chamber and finding her in bed with Ajax would make even the most indifferent husband angry,” I said. “He could have struck Ajax down in fury, realized he was dead, and decided to leave him in the back street like discarded trash.”
“Except the husband is small and elderly,” Cassia said as she bent her head to write.
“He probably has a large bodyguard to do such deeds for him.”
Cassia’s stylus moved decidedly. “That is certainly something to inquire about. But you have no need to rush into danger. I can tell Helvius to find out whether Ajax went to Severina, and if the husband discovered them and has a strong bodyguard.”
I reflected that I’d heard Helvius’s name too many times in this conversation. “And if he is caught and the truth beaten out of him? Wrath will fall onyou, and I might not be able to protect you. Patrician families are dangerous.”
The stylus paused, and Cassia glanced up. “I know. I grew up in a patrician household.”
“And now you are here.”
Cassia’s cheeks pinkened. “Yes, I take your point.”
“Inquiring is dangerous for both of us, but less so for me.”
Cassia studied her tablet again, but her hand did not move. “Very well, we will think on how best to gain her household.”
I growled. “No rushing out when I’m at the baths and having Helvius smuggle you into her house in a rolled-up carpet.”
This drew a laugh. “Like Cleopatra with Julius Caesar? I am dubious about that story, though it does make a good tale.”
