Cassia set her tablet aside. “I may be able to help with that.” She opened the scroll on which she’d copied the inscription and turned it around to him. Laurentius regarded it with bewilderment. The ancient script must look like so many scratches to him, as it did to me.
“Did you copy it out?” Laurentius asked. “That was clever.”
Cassia laid the scroll on the table. “Perhaps Leonidas and I can visit your father and explain.”
Laurentius rubbed a hand over the bridge of his nose, smearing the dirt and blood there. “You won’t tell him I attacked your gladiator, will you? I was desperate, but he’ll not be happy with me for that.”
“No need,” Cassia assured him. “You made a mistake, is all. We didn’t know the ring was important to you, or we’d have delivered it to you instead. If the play won’t go on without it, then we will pay for another.”
Laurentius brightened. “I believe that will do. My father hates to be out money. We barely make enough to keep us alive, he says.”
He finished cheerfully, as though the life of a destitute actor was fine enough for him.
“Where can we find your father?” Cassia asked.
“In the Subura. At the end of the lane marked by the fountain of the three satyrs.” Laurentius leapt to his feet, his energy restored. “I’ll tell him to expect you. We don’t need to mention the misplaced ring to our funder, do we?”
“Not at all.” Cassia sent him a smile of understanding.
Laurentius flashed an answering grin, his cheeks reddening and his eyes softening. I seized the young man by the back of his neck and steered him out the door.
Downstairs, I spoke a few stern words to him before I sent him off, then I returned to the apartment. I found Cassia at the table, writing furiously.
“Do you believe his story?” I asked. “It is … very strange.”
“Incredible is the word I would choose.” Cassia laid down her stylus, but reluctantly, as though her hand itched to take it up again. “The man who commissioned the play obviously did not want anyone to know he had anything to do with the ring.” Her brow furrowed. “Is it really a play? Or the plot the princeps fears? Did you know, by the way, that the earliest actors in Rome were Etruscan? Perhaps there’s some connection—or at least that connection is to be implied.”
“Why choose Vibius to deliver the ring?” I asked, not sure what the history of acting had to do with anything. Small wonder Vibius had hovered behind me when I’d found ring though, his interest avid.
“You will have to ask him,” Cassia said. “I want to visit Laurentius’s father and find out about this play, and who is paying for it.” She hesitated. “Though I hate to bring the praetorian guard down on an innocent acting troupe who only believe they are fortunate to land a good commission.”
“We don’t have to tell Nero everything,” I said in a quiet voice.
Cassia caught my eye, the light in hers approving. “I agree. We find out as much as we can and then we make a discreet report.”
I wasn’t certain what she meant by a discreet report, but I too did not want Nero to send guards to wipe out Laurentius and his entire family. The princeps might include everyone on their street for good measure, in case any were in on the plot.
Cassia returned to her notes, and I fetched more wine from the shop below for our evening meal. We ate our supper of bread and lentils laced with greens in silence that night, each of us contemplating all we’d learned.
I slept on the floor by the window once more. In the morning, I made my way to the building site, while Cassia declared she’d venture to the Subura in search of Laurentius’s family. This early, that district would be the safest it ever would be, but I ordered her to remain at Laurentius’s house and wait for me to join her there. She nodded without argument.
Vibius wasn’t yet at the site when I reached it. Gallus busily spoke to the foreman about the new foundation blocks, which must have been delivered during the night, that lay gleaming on the grass.
“Vibius?” Gallus rubbed the bald patch on his head when I asked where he was. “He mumbled something about family and departed. I don’t need him today. You either if you don’t wish to stay.”
I did want to stay. I wanted to watch Gallus and the men decide how to lay out the base of the walls. I wanted to help haul the stones into place, become covered in dust when we mixed the concrete, and piece together the patterns of opus reticulatum that would face the walls.
All this would take far more than a day, but I itched to start.
I did help lever a few blocks into place and then took my leave when the men paused for a rest. The fact that Gallus let them rest raised him even further in my estimation.
I debated whether to track down Vibius or join Cassia at Laurentius’s home. Vibius’s excuse of a family matter could mean something he needed to assist his wife with, or his brother-in-law could have made demands on Vibius’s time. Cloelius might have little funds, as Gallus had told me, but a paterfamilias held power whether he had money or not.
I chose the Subura, not wanting to leave Cassia alone there longer than necessary. I crossed Rome to it then found the street fronted by a fountain with three dancing satyrs. The fountain was well constructed, leftover from the glory days of building in Augustus’s time. The satyrs now were green with moss, their inane faces smeared with bird droppings.
The narrow lane behind the fountain was packed with mud. Apartment buildings—insulae—rose on either side of me. The structures grew smaller as the street advanced, these insulae holding four or five apartments each. The lane ended slap against one of these squat buildings, no way through.
Inside the insula at the end, in a stone-floored room on the third floor, I found Cassia.
