I described to her my foray into Severina’s house and the conversation with Vestalis.
“He is a sad old man.” I pulled out the coins he’d given me and laid them on the table. “Says he doesn’t care about Severina, but he’d no doubt be happier with a kinder wife and a son or two.”
“Very likely. Children should mourn and honor their fathers, not the other way around.” Cassia’s gaze moved to our ancestor shrine, decorated once more with a vase of flowers. I added my handful of walnuts to it before I took my seat at the table.
“He is still in great pain, which explains why he barely notices Severina,” I told her. “His wife and daughter died in Hispania, I think. Or perhaps Britannia. He is the most bitter when he speaks about Britannia.”
Cassia studied two tablets laid out side by side in front of her. “What I don’t understand is why Ajax and Rufus? They are very different men.”
“Maybe to this man gladiators are all the same. Fighting bodies in the arena.”
“But they arenotthe same. I have seen the drawings on walls all over Rome—people sketch the gladiator they like best, adding what makes him distinctive. The Thracian helmet. The net and spear of the retiarius. The sword and shield of the secutor.”
“True.” I traced the shape of a helmet on the table with my finger. “Ajax was a secutor, Rufus, a myrmillo. But the killer dressed him as a Thracian.”
“Which means he was vague about which type of gladiator Rufus was. There are other differences between them, though. Ajax was a captive, sold to the games. Rufus was a free person, who became a gladiator voluntarily.”
“Rufus took a wife, while Ajax had no permanent lover,” I added.
“Ajax also isn’t Roman.” Cassia ran a fingertip along the wax in her tablet. “Rufus is from Latinium and grew up in Rome. Ajax was a soldier in Pannonia.”
Cassia’s finger halted. I don’t know what she pointed at, though I recognized the P from the letters I’d traced. I felt a small trickle of pride that I remembered it.
“Pannonia.” Cassia’s voice went quiet. “Great Minerva. Is it that simple?”
Chapter 23
Isaw nothing simple about our life these past days. “What are you saying?” I asked impatiently.
“Ajax is from Pannonia.” Cassia held my gaze with her adamant one, as though I should understand everything. “He was a soldier, you said.”
“Not in the Roman army. From a tribe called the Quadi. So was Herakles. Ajax and Herakles call it something different, but I don’t remember what. They were captured in a battle, or during a raid.”
Cassia hurriedly opened tablets and unrolled scrolls, leafing through them. “Vestalis lost his wife in the provinces.”
“In Britannia …”
“No, no.” Cassia ceased her searching and sat back, tapping her stylus to her notes in triumph. “His wife died when he was proconsul of a small settlement in Pannonia. Killed in a raid, Helvius told me.”
I regarded her quizzically. “You think Ajax was part of that raid?”
“Possibly. Herakles too. When did Aemilianus bring them into the ludus?”
“Three years ago. I remember they did well in the Saturnalian games not a month after they joined us. They did not speak Latin, and they’d never had a bath in their lives, but their ferocity drew the admiration of the crowd. That was three Saturnalias past.”
Cassia began to scan her notes again. “Three years ago, yes—Vestalis’s wife and daughter died. He was moved to a post in Britannia, then asked to be transferred to Hispania a year or so later, a warmer clime. There he met Severina and Domitiana, while they were visiting Domitiana’s son.”
Helvius, secretary to Domitiana, would have learned of Vestalis’s sad story.
“You are saying Vestalis killed Ajax?” I asked. “In revenge?”
“Very possibly. Hiring a man to do it for him, of course.”
Her conclusion did not match the frail elderly man I’d shared a cup of wine with today. He’d been heartbroken, not full of the fires of vengeance. “Why have Ajax cut up and left in the Subura?”
“That, I do not know.” Cassia sat back, fingers resting on the edge of the table. “From what Helvius told me, the raiders were not kind to Vestalis’s wife and daughter. They were brutal. Perhaps Vestalis was returning that brutality.”
“What you say could explain why Vestalis would want to kill Ajax. But why Rufus?”
