Gates on either side of this passageway opened to a vast garden—a hortus—that smelled lush and green with spring. In the twilight, I could see little of it except the well-pruned shrubs bracketing the gates, but what touched my senses promised beauty.
The courtyard ended at a large vestibule lined with benches, where Cloelius’s clients would wait to see him. A double door studded with bronze rivets and finished with giant bronze doorknobs opened to a well-lit atrium. The pool in its center, the impluvium, glittered in more lamplight.
A thin, stiff man waited for us, the majordomo of the household.
“Tertius Cloelius Crispus requests that you attend him in the tablinum,” he stated.
His coolness told me he disapproved of Cloelius’s decision. The twelfth hour—the first hour of the night—was no time for petitioners to call. We should have turned up with the master’s other clients in the morning.
I gestured for the majordomo to lead me to the tablinum, and he did so, with increasing disdain.
Cassia, as usual whenever I met with the master of a grand domus, faded out of sight without a word. She’d find her way to the servants’ area of the house and discover much more than I would.
The tablinum—the office where the head of the household conducted his business—lay on the other side of the atrium. The majordomo opened one of its folding doors, and I climbed a single step into a large room.
Cloelius’s tablinum was bigger than others I’d been invited into, but then this house’s size wasn’t hampered by any surrounding streets. Instead of being tucked behind shops, as domii were farther down the hill, this one stood alone in its spacious hortus.
The rear of the tablinum held another set of doors that would open into the peristyle garden, a private space for family and prestigious guests. Since I was neither, the doors were shut.
Two men occupied the tablinum. One rose from a stool when I entered—the tall, stretched form of Vibius.
“Leonidas?” Vibius asked in concern. “Why have you come? Has something happened to Gallus?”
I liked that his first thought was worry for Gallus, instead of demanding my business in suspicion.
“Nothing wrong with Gallus,” I reassured him quickly. “Or the site.”
Cloelius remained seated behind his desk, whose inlaid top was cluttered with scrolls, ink, and pens. He wore a toga, expertly draped, with beaten gold rings on his fingers and an armband, also of beaten gold, that clasped one bared bicep.
I could not burst out to Vibius about the ring and why he’d been chosen to retrieve it, so I fell uncomfortably silent.
Cloelius rested his arms on his desk, a half-smile on his face, pleased that his presence stymied a private conversation.
“You walked here?” Vibius stammered, as though he could think of nothing else to say.
Before I could answer, Cloelius snorted a laugh. “Did you imagine he hired a litter to bear him up the hill? A gladiator?”
“A freedman,” I corrected him. “I was given the rudis.”
Cloelius spread his hands. His first two fingers were smudged with ink from the correspondence he’d been writing. “Whether gladiator or freedman, you use your feet, not others’ labor.”
“I will walk back with you,” Vibius cut in. “The streets are perilous, and a fighter can protect me and my lady wife.”
“Your lady wife will be content to spend the night here,” Cloelius said with a hint of steel. “I hardly want you risking my sister’s life taking her through a city full of brigands to that hovel on the Aventine.”
Vibius set his mouth in a stubborn line. “Even so, we are leaving.”
“I agree with Cloelius,” I found myself saying. “It is too dangerous to return home this late, unless your brother-in-law will lend her a litter with guards.”
I switched my gaze to Cloelius, knowing he would do no such thing. He wished his sister to stay here with him, though I knew he’d be happy to toss Vibius out with the rubbish.
Now it was Vibius’s turn for the derisive laugh. “Cloelius doesn’t have anything as grand as a guarded litter. Most of his servants have fled, except the slaves, who are stuck with him. The great Tertius Cloelius Crispus can’t pay for guards anymore.”
Cloelius surged to his feet. Though his stocky body was shorter than Vibius’s lengthy one, his fury and his pride made him seem larger than his Equestrian brother-in-law.
“I am finished with your disrespect, Vibius. Take your gladiator and go.” He pointed imperiously at the door. “Aelia stays here.”
“She is my wife.”
