“Where is this kitchen garden?” I asked curtly. “Where the servants gather? I will wait for Herakles there.”
Helvius moved to a small door in the back of the room and pulled it open. “Just down the path. Veer to the left, or else you’ll go to the main garden, and that is forbidden to all but the family.”
Without a word, I strode past him into the night. Cassia stepped out after me, but I turned on her.
“No,” I said harshly. “It’s too cold.”
I marched toward the thin line of trees Helvius had pointed out. From the house, floating loudly over the peristyle to the open air, came a shriek of feminine ecstasy, then another, and another. It might be a while before Herakles was ready to leave.
* * *
A cold wind was blowing,and a half-moon hung in a sky tattered with clouds when Herakles emerged. I’d returned to the peristyle after wandering the kitchen gardens for a time and lounged on a bench under the colonnade, shutting my ears to Herakles’s animal-like grunts.
The majordomo of the house ushered us out, and the doorman quickly shut the gate, bolting it behind us.
We were both still alive, our senses not fuddled, and free to go.
“You didn’t have to wait for me.” Herakles let the thick accent he’d favored during dinner fade. “I know my way back to the ludus.”
“I promised Aemil I’d return you whole.”
“Domitiana has nothing to do with killing Ajax or Rufus. I could have told you that.”
“Best to be sure.” I tramped along the road that led to the Transtiberim, fully aware of the light footsteps that followed close behind.
Herakles didn’t notice Cassia in our wake, but he was bathing in the aftermath of sating his appetites. To show me they hadn’t been quite sated, Herakles suggested we go to the Subura to finish the night.
“No,” I said in a hard voice. “Aemil will have my head if I don’t bring you home.”
Herakles turned surly. “You could have gone down in that fight. You had no need to prove you are and always will beprimus palus.”
“Your lady liked you as a fallen warrior,” I reminded him.
“True. She smells like vinegar, but she has endurance. And much money.” Herakles wasn’t foolish enough to clink a pouch of gold on the dark street, but his satisfied grin told me she’d paid him well. I’d received nothing.
I maintained stony silence as Herakles tried to persuade me to visit a lupinarius with him, but finally he gave up. I waited until Septimius locked the gate firmly behind Herakles before I turned for my own way home.
I paused to wait for the shadow that soon caught up to me. I walked close to her, my hand protectively on her arm.
Our rapid pace through the streets to the lane on the lower slopes of the Quirinal kept us from speaking. The Forum Romanum was silent, the columns of the Basilica Julia and the temple to the divine Julius gleaming in the moonlight.
Only when we reached our lodgings, and I’d shut and bolted the outer and inner doors, did I breathe more easily. Our apartment was dark—the only noise the rumble of delivery carts through the streets.
Cassia immediately divested herself of her cloak, lit an oil lamp, seated herself at the table, and opened her tablets. “What did you learn from Domitiana?” she asked.
She was already writing, the stylus moving rapidly. I sat down heavily and poured myself the last of the wine from the jug.
“I learned that she is a vain, selfish woman interested in her own pleasure. Not much different from many highborn women who invite gladiators into their homes.” I turned the cup in my hands. “The difference was that she did not care who knew it. Believes herself too rich and important to worry about scandal.”
Cassia wrote for a moment, the stylus making only a whisper of sound. “From what Helvius tells me, Domitiana’s husband—Severinus Casellius—expected her to be the perfect Roman matron, in the style of Octavia. Rarely leaving the house, spending all day weaving, and taking care of the home and children, never raising her voice in argument. Humble, chaste, and obedient. An old-fashioned sentiment these days, but some patricians expect their wives to adhere to it.”
I’d seen none of these traits in Domitiana. “So once he died, Domitiana decided to be exactly the opposite?”
“It seems so. Helvius said that once Severinus was in the family tomb, she bought new clothes, opened the villa for substantial banquets, and began affairs with anyone her husband would have disapproved of.”
“Her son did not object?” Once a son became paterfamilias in his own right, he could condemn his mother or even have her executed for her behavior.
“Her son left Rome as quickly as he could. He also revels in his freedom, having been under his father’s thumb as well. He stays in Hispania and rarely visits Rome.”
