Aelia lifted her gaze to the flaking paint on the ceiling. “I did try to explain this to him, Leonidas.”
“Why couldn’t Secundus give Duilius or Laurentius the ring himself?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Vibius had to say.
“Because,” Aelia answered. “Secundus wants nothing to tie him to the ring. When men are being rounded up for trial and execution, it will have nothing to do with him.”
“Execution?” Again, Vibius started. “Do you really believe it would come to that?”
“Yes,” I said.
My one word stunned Vibius. Aelia shook her head, resigned that her husband would listen to a gladiator, an infamis, more readily than he would his own wife.
“Well.” Vibius let out a sigh. “I suppose it’s good I never touched it.”
If Vibius had told me the truth right away, I wouldn’t have touched it either. I’d have flung the ring into the Tiber and walked away. Because of Vibius’s reluctance, I was bound by Nero to search out a conspirator, a task that could possibly condemn Laurentius and all his family to spectacular deaths.
“You are lucky I found it,” I told Vibius. “You will be safer this way.”
“But will you be?” Aelia asked with perception. I understood why Cassia said she liked her.
I shrugged. “I’m used to danger.”
I meant that as literal truth, but Vibius’s eyes glowed with sudden interest. “What must it be like to face excitement every day?” he asked.
“Tedious.” I stepped closer to Vibius. “Tell no one about the ring. It is gone. Nothing to do with you any longer.”
“Gladly,” Aelia said. “Unlike my husband, I do not seek excitement. A comfortable room with a cup of wine and a good book, and I am happy.” She rubbed Vibius’s arm again, her affection for him clear.
Whatever Vibius had done to win this woman made my respect for him rise. She was not the sort to put her trust in many, but somehow the lanky and rather unworldly Vibius had made her happy.
The majordomo returned not long later and showed me to a sleeping cubicle, which was little more than a small square room with a bunk against the wall. The bunk was built of wood rather than being a stone slab, and held a pallet stuffed with wool covered by frayed blankets.
The only difference between this cubiculum and a gladiator’s cell was that the walls were painted with scenes from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the folding door wasn’t locked from the outside.
Cassia waited for me there, but they’d not provided a pallet for her or even a blanket. The majordomo obviously assumed she’d share the bed with me and made certain with a look as he departed that I knew how much he despised me for it.
I’d grown used to sleeping on the floor in our apartment and offered to switch places with Cassia for the night. She would not hear of it.
“And if someone enters and finds you on the floor?” she asked. “If a servant saw us sleeping in reverse, they might take it as a very bad omen, if they didn’t have the master throw us out altogether.”
I trusted her knowledge of highborn men’s homes—she’d been raised in one—and resigned myself to the overly soft pallet. She curled up in the blanket I’d handed her, seemingly content with that.
I told Cassia in a quiet murmur what Vibius and his wife had shared with me. I didn’t say too much about it at the moment, because who knew what ears listened to our conversation?
Cassia understood my reluctance, answering in whispers before she went silent, quickly drifting off to sleep.
I snuffed out the lamp but lay awake much longer, listening to the silences of the house.
I contrasted the deep quietness of the domus, more unnerving than soothing, with the chaos of Laurentius’s tiny apartment. The family had teased their father good-naturedly, without fear. Male heads of households could do anything they pleased with their wife and offspring, including having them put to death, but Duilius’s family had regarded him with cheerful fondness.
Aelia gazed at Vibius with much the same sentiment. Though ostensibly she was under Vibius’s complete command, she seemed perfectly comfortable with him. Cloelius, on the other hand, expected unquestioning obedience, and he moldered in this great villa alone.
The darkness was intense, this house well away from the rest of the city. I wondered why artisans had bothered to decorate the walls of the cubiculum, as the pictures could barely be seen when I’d had the lamp lit. Even in the daylight, this chamber would be very dim.
My pondering was interrupted by a faint cry. I stilled in the pressing darkness, listening until my ears prickled. Above me, rain pattered, muffled by the thick roof.
When I heard the cry again, I realized it came from Cassia. She hadn’t called out in alarm, hadn’t moved from where she slept just inside the door.
