Finally, Cassia gave the man a smile and said a few final words, turning away after the basketmaker had answered. He was grinning as we departed, lifting a hand in farewell.
“Chryseis is not at home,” Cassia told me as we approached the staircase that wound upward through the insula. “But he will say nothing if we go up and search her apartment.”
She started for the tile-lined stairs, but I stepped in front of her. “A very long conversation for only that.”
“He doesn’t speak much Latin, and usually lets his wife do all the talking. He was happy to converse with someone who understood his language.”
“Greek.” I turned and started up the stairs. “There are plenty of Greeks in this city.”
“AeolianGreek,” Cassia said as we climbed. “It’s a different dialect from Ionic, which is what you mostly hear in Rome. Aeolian is spoken in Pergamum and on Lesbos.”
“Is that your dialect?” I asked. “Aeolian?”
“My father spoke both, as well as Doric and Achaean. He was very well-read. He came from Smyrna, which straddles the border of Ionia and Aeolia.”
“Smyrna.” This was the first I’d learned of her heritage. I’d guessed her family came from the eastern end of the Mare Nostrum, but she’d never mentioned exactly where. Cassia’s father had already been a slave in a Campanian household when Cassia was born.
“Yes,” Cassia answered without hesitation. “My father’s family is still there.”
I had not heard Cassia’s entire history—how had her father been brought into captivity? What had happened to her mother? Did Cassia long to return to her father’s home, or had she given up the idea that such a thing would ever happen? Or had she adapted to Rome as so many of us had, and had no intention of living elsewhere?
We could not discuss these things now as we climbed the many floors, the stairs deteriorating as we went. I added the ideas forming in my head to the ones I’d had earlier this afternoon.
The upper landing where Chryseis lived was quiet, her door shut. The door opposite hers was open, but I saw no sign of the little girl I’d encountered there, nor heard anyone in the apartment beyond. They must fear no theft of their belongings while they were out. A glance inside revealed one low table and that was all. Perhaps they didn’t fear thieves because they had nothing to steal.
Chryseis’s door had a lock, as I’d observed before. It was a sophisticated metal one with tumblers, very new. None of the other apartments we’d passed bore such locks.
What I noticed most about it today was that it was unfastened, which made me uneasy. I doubted Chryseis would leave her door unbolted and wondered at the lapse.
I cautiously opened the door, peering inside before I signaled Cassia to follow me. I saw no one, but I did not relax.
The room we stepped into was square, with an ill-fitted door in the wall leading to a small balcony. A table and stools were the only furnishings, with a cabinet along one wall hiding its contents behind a coarse linen curtain. An unlit lamp reposed on the table beside a stack of unevenly made ceramic plates. I found nothing that indicated a woman of means lived here.
Another room, a smaller square, was tucked behind the first. A bed reposed here—a wooden pallet with a straw mattress and blankets. Pegs held a line of tunics and stolae, well-made but unadorned.
When I returned to the front room, I saw that the curtain had been folded partway back from the cabinet, and Cassia had pulled out a box of scrolls and tablets.
Without a qualm, Cassia laid out the tablets and began to unroll and examine a scroll. I lifted the cloth from the other end of the cabinet and found cups and a small jar with one piece broken off—the missing piece lay beside it as though Chryseis meant to have it mended. She had towels both new and threadbare, and several baskets, most of which resembled those made downstairs.
While Cassia read through the scroll, I stepped idly to the balcony.
The wooden platform was just wide enough for me to stand on. The insula had been built on the side of the Aventine Hill where it began to be steep, and this balcony looked out over the rooftop of the insula next door.
I could see down to the valley that held the green oval of the Circus Maximus. Chariot teams were just finishing training for the day, horses being led slowly away and practice chariots wheeled off by assistants to the great drivers.
I thought I understood why Chryseis had chosen this apartment. Her belongings told me she was frugal to the point of meanness—with her wealth she could easily buy another jug to replace the chipped one. So high in the insula, these rooms would be cheap, but the view was marvelous, Rome rolling into the mists.
Cassia gasped, and I turned quickly to the room. “What is it?”
Cassia had opened the scroll all the way, her fingers holding down the papyrus as she read. “Chryseis owns this entire building. Why on earth does she live uphere?”
The view aside, I wondered as well. “She could have a large residence on the first floor, you mean.”
Cassia let the scroll roll up on itself before she set it carefully back into its box. “From what I am reading, I’d guess because she can charge a high rent for those first-floor apartments. Why occupy them when tenants will pay for them? She doesn’t need much space, and she can collect rents on the more expensive rooms.”
I recalled the furtive glance of the little girl across the hall. It must be unnerving for a poor family to live right next to their landlord, and by all accounts, Chryseis was not a compassionate woman.
“Is there any clue there to where Rufus might be?” I asked. “Chryseis might have another house where he could be hiding.”
