Scowling, Vatia stomped out after his guard. I took Cassia’s arm and led her after them.
Once we were all back on the street, the basketmaker lost no time in herding his wife and daughter home. They hurried close together, the basketmaker peering fearfully over his shoulder at us before they rounded a corner and were lost to sight.
I thanked Vatia for his help—he grunted a response but appeared relieved that he didn’t have to deal with the basketmaker and family any longer.
I turned our steps to Marcianus’s, wanting to seek his opinion of my ideas. I needed his steady head in all this.
Marcianus was in but seeing a patient, a woman who jabbered at him in his back room. Marcianus’s calming tones rolled to us, cut off by the woman insisting she needed a charm to heal her festering hand, not Marcianus’s paste. We glimpsed Marcia in another room, grinding something in a stone mortar, probably the concoction Marcianus was trying to prescribe the woman.
I sat on the bench just inside the cool front room to wait, Cassia sinking down beside me.
“What did the basketmaker really say?” I asked her in a low voice.
Cassia glanced outside the open door to make certain we wouldn’t be overheard.
“He was paid to let the man into the building,” she murmured. “Paid quite a lot, though the basketmaker did not specify how much. This man came not long before we arrived the first time. He was lugging a large bag, and paid the basketmaker and his wife to say nothing. The basketmaker took the money, believing the man simply there for a secret liaison. This happens all the time, and a few coins are always welcome. When the basketmaker learned about the murder, he realized the man who’d paid them was the killer, or at least he’d lugged in Rufus’s body after the fact. The basketmaker feared that if anyone found out he took the man’s coin he’d be arrested as part of the conspiracy and possibly his entire family condemned for it. Hence, his sudden trip to Ostia. When no one came after him, he thought it safe to return to Rome, but a vigile saw him and Captain Vatia hauled him in for questioning.”
If the basketmaker had no friends among the magistrates, then he’d been right to worry about himself and his family.
“This is not what you told Vatia,” I said quietly.
Cassia moved her shoulders in a shrug. “Does the man deserve to die because he welcomed a few sestertii from the wrong man? Does his wife or daughter deserve to be sold into slavery for it? I told Vatia what he needed to know.”
I studied her, a small woman with a crooked nose and soft eyes. “That was good of you.”
Another shrug. “The basketmaker is not a bad man.”
“And he speaks Aeolian Greek.”
“It was pleasant to hear it again.”
There was a faint quaver in her voice. Cassia probably hadn’t spoken much of that language since her father had died.
I rested my hand on hers. Cassia turned her head and met my gaze a brief moment, one that revealed her loneliness, which she covered every day with her determination to get on with life. She bared herself in that one instant, before she blinked, shutting out her inner self as thoroughly as she swathed her body in her cloak.
I squeezed her hand gently and released it.
Running footsteps drew my attention outside. I spied Septimius, the bulky gate guard from the ludus, approaching Marcianus’s place in a hurried shuffle.
I assumed he was rushing to bid Marcianus to tend an injured gladiator, but when Septimius saw me, he ducked inside and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Leonidas, thank the gods. You weren’t home so I came to tell Marcianus to help me find you. Aemil is asking for you. Bellowing for you, more like.”
I was on my feet. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Regulus is gone.” Septimius rested his fists on his hips, trying to catch his breath. “He vanished last night and didn’t turn up this morning. Aemil is livid. And afraid he’s going to be a corpse like the others. Come and calm Aemil down before he beats us all.”
Chapter 21
Ileft Cassia at Marcianus’s and jogged with Septimius back to the ludus.
By the time we reached it, I could hear Aemil shouting. He usually ran the school with gruff efficiency, but today, his rage filled the space like wind-tossed waves. He was, at the moment, beating the second gate guard with the flat of his wooden sword.
“Leonidas!” Aemil broke off and charged at me. I prepared myself for him to strikemewith Nemesis, but he halted an arm’s-length away. “This lout says he never saw Regulus go. But he must have let him out, the oaf.”
I was happy I’d persuaded Cassia to remain behind. She’d argued, but I hadn’t wanted her near a furious Aemil. He was a dangerous man who kept himself contained by great effort. Marcianus had agreed with me, and Cassia had consented, reluctantly, to stay.
“I never saw him.” Plinius, the second gate guard, lifted his bruised face. “I swear it on all the gods. On my ancestors.”
