I believed her. She had no need to commit a gruesome murder to end her marriage, and no reason at all to kill Ajax in the bargain. She did not strike me as a crazed woman murdering gladiators for sport. Angry and cold, yes, certain that everyone she spoke to was far less intelligent than she was, yes, but not a madwoman.
I turned from her and addressed Daphnus, “I wish you the best on your marriage.”
“Thank you.” Daphnus’s grin returned. “The wedding feast will be one of great decadence. Perhaps, love, we should invite Leonidas to give an exhibition bout at the supper. The guests would enjoy it.”
“No.” Her one word cut off any possibility. “Good day, Leonidas.”
Daphnus sent me a helpless shrug but turned his gaze admiringly to Chryseis. I silently fished out the key I’d taken from this apartment the night before and dropped it into the glaring Chryseis’s hand. I wondered if she’d had a spare key to enter today, and if she’d left that key with Daphnus. Or perhaps the basketmaker, a man she might trust more.
I silently wished Daphnus and Chryseis well in their marriage and departed.
* * *
I calledin to see Marcianus before I left the Aventine. He was more subdued than usual. He’d examined Rufus and found that he too had been fed a luxurious meal, including gold leaf, before he’d been felled from behind. Marcianus was on his way to the ludus now to tell Aemil he could come fetch the body.
I left him in disquiet and moved on with my next errand.
The Subura was a different place by day. More businesses were open, including a few entire buildings dedicated to shops. The lupinari were quieter, but it was late enough in the morning that several were open.
I entered the one Ajax had last visited before he went off to his fate.
The lady in charge was even less happy to see me today than she had been two nights ago. This time, however, the lupinarius was less busy, and I persuaded her to let me speak to the young woman who had been with Ajax.
I had to pay twice the going rate, because, the madam snapped, I was not a customer, just a nosy man. Thankful that Cassia kept my coin pouch full these days, I handed over the price.
The young woman yawned on a bunk in her cubicle, as I’d interrupted her sleep. A tunic slid down her arm, baring a grubby shoulder. She’d been to a hairdresser recently, but the black curls of her coiffure were greasy and drooping.
“Poor Ajax,” the young woman said mournfully. “He wasn’t the gentlest of men, but he didn’t deservethat. Gives me chills, it does, thinking about it. And me with him just before.”
Her pity was genuine. “Did he say where he was going when he left here?” I asked, keeping the urgency from my voice.
The young woman shook her head, curls that had been pinned into a tight cone atop her head dancing. “Only that he was off to have a splendid meal in a place far better than this hovel. That could mean anywhere.”
“Did he mention a name? Or whether he went to see a man or woman?” I recalled Marcia telling me that Ajax enjoyed the company of highborn men, preferably senator’s sons, when he wasn’t with ladies in the Subura.
“A woman, I think, though I’m not sure why I say that.” She drew her knees to her chest, her short tunic baring her legs to her hip. “No, wait, I do. He said that it was worth the annoyance to lie onherdining couch. I imagine he expected a large reward for his trouble.”
“He did not like the woman he was going to visit?”
“Not a matter of liking or not liking. Ajax was no different from me, I suppose—or you. He did what he had to in order to put a few sestertii in his coin purse. Except, in this case, it would more likely be denarii. Ajax was saving to buy his freedom. He wanted to go back to Pannonia, to see if any of his family were still alive. I don’t know where Pannonia is, but a long way from here I think.”
“A very long way.” Not as far as some of the regions in Germania, or where Cassia’s father had lived in Smyrna, but it was in the wild part of the empire, with plenty of crazed barbarians ready to swoop down and murder those Romans who had been posted there.
“Ajax didn’t mind being a gladiator,” the young woman went on. “Liked his fame. But really, he wanted to go home.”
I thought about the man I’d known only slightly, full of bravado, a fighter who always won. Ruthless, with a killing instinct. Aemil had to constantly tell Ajax to put on a show and not simply go for the throat. Ajax had reined himself in with difficulty.
Now he was dead, struck down without a chance to defend himself.
I wondered if the food and wine he’d been given had been poisoned. A concoction that would weaken him or make him sleepy would give the murderer a great advantage.
I couldn’t imagine Ajax being unaware of an attacker coming up behind him no matter how drunk he might be. Rufus even less so. The helmets we wore blocked our view except straight ahead, so we were trained to sense where our enemy was at all times. The whisper of breath, the scrape of a foot on sand, even the creak of a joint as a man bent his knee, betrayed his position. I’d been aware of the brush of air as my opponent moved or the warmth of his body as he neared me.
Ajax, trained by Aemil, and one of the better gladiators in the ludus, would never have let himself be hit from behind if he weren’t dosed with something to make him insensible.
The young woman looked sad for Ajax. I handed her a sestertii, whispered to her to keep it for herself, and left the house.
I returned to our rooms to find Cassia laying out a meal, complete with fresh bread.
