“Hesiodos had you released, remember?” Cassia continued. “Any charges dismissed.” She opened one of her tablets, as though checking her notes about the night I’d been arrested by the vigiles. “Our benefactor must be powerful to be able to do that.”
“I will hang Hesiodos by the heels until he tells us the man’s name,” I threatened.
“Hesiodos doesn’t know himself.” Cassia sat down calmly, as though the princeps wasn’t furious with us, and we had no hope of escaping his wrath. “Hesiodos is a go-between for several high-placed men. He has a connection inside the palace, which is why Nero sometimes uses him to send for us. Hesiodos runs errands for a few senators as well. That’s as much as I’ve been able to discover about him.”
“A hired messenger.” A trickle of interest filtered through my anger. Hesiodos was as cryptic a person as our mysterious benefactor.
“As a slave, he grew into a highly trusted position,” Cassia said. “Once he was freed, he hired himself out to do the same trusted jobs. He’s done well.” She sounded admiring.
“Maybe Hesiodos can tell Nero to leave us alone.”
“I’m not certain he is that trusted.” Cassia opened another tablet, skimming its contents. “The best thing we can do is find Secundus, discover whether the conspiracy is real or simply the imagination of a misguided playwright, and present our findings to Nero.”
“If the plot is not real, he won’t believe us.”
Cassia touched her stylus to her lips. “Not necessarily. We can make him understand.”
I sat down heavily on my stool, not sharing her confidence. “The trouble is—where do we find Secundus? No plotters against the princeps are going to trust us, not when it’s known we run up to the Palatine whenever he beckons.”
“I have some ideas.” Cassia moved the stylus to her cheek, tapping her creamy dark skin. “Though I’d love to see Alexandria.”
She sounded so wistful I decided, then and there, that she would see it. How I would bring this about, I didn’t know, but was I determined to find a way.
Gallus would be finishing up work at the building site by now, so there was no reason for me to go there, except to explain why I hadn’t turned up this morning. I also wanted to hold Vibius against the wall until I’d made sure he’d given me all the information he knew.
But I did not want to leave Cassia alone. Someone had tried to kill Laurentius. He was safe at the ludus, and we’d sent his family away, but the killer might want to eliminate us too. The fewer witnesses to whatever was going on, the better.
“I should make a start with the jewelers,” Cassia said.
“Not without me,” I replied at once. “And it’s too late, anyway. They’ll be gone for the day.”
“Not all of them,” Cassia began, but she caught my meaning, and nodded. She understood the danger of roaming the streets alone with a killer wandering them too. “Tomorrow, then.”
We spent an uneasy evening, consuming cold leftovers from our midday meal and bedding down early. I continued to sleep on the pallet against the balcony door, Cassia on the my bed in its niche.
I lay awake much of the night puzzling over what we knew—and mostly what we did not.
There might or might not be a plot to overthrow Nero. Nero had spent a long time securing his position by getting rid of any threats to his rule, and he’d angered many highborn men in the process.
Plots had been hatched against him, those perpetrators caught and executed. It was not difficult to believe another conspiracy had formed.
These conspirators had decided to find a willing dupe—Laurentius—to play the part of an heir to the line of Etruscan kings who’d ruled Rome before the Republic. There might truly be a lost heir, Cassia had said, among old families from that time. The ring would be a crucial piece of evidence that such a man was descended from Tarquinius the Proud. Even so, it would be safer to hire a man to pretend to be the heir and draw Nero’s attention while the real heir remained safe. The conspirators had lured Laurentius and family into the mess by pretending they’d take part in an innocent play.
When I’d blundered in and taken the ring, giving it to Nero, of all people, the lead plotter had decided to start cleaning up behind him. He’d begun by trying to murder Laurentius. The unlucky young man in the river had simply been unfortunate enough to resemble him.
I hoped Duilius had removed his family from Rome before the gates shut for the night. I remembered his wife’s determination and his daughter’s hardheaded sense and concluded that the pair of them would ensure the family got safely away.
Who was Secundus? The true leader of the conspiracy, its sole planner? Or yet another dupe?
As I sighed and turned onto my side, I realized I was more comfortable sleeping on the floor than my bunk. I’d slept on hard stone most of my life, and Cassia was welcome to the softer pallet in the alcove.
Cassia had dreamily said she’d like to see Alexandria, and I’d had the spontaneous wish to take her there. Cassia was a slave, though, and not my property. I could not spirit her out of Rome without her owner’s permission.
A few months ago, I’d taken Hesiodos aside and asked him to tell our benefactor that I wanted to give him whatever her price was. A scribe would be very expensive, but I was determined to find a way to raise the money.
The answer is, unfortunately, no, Hesiodos had said to me. His dry voice, surprisingly, had held some sympathy.
I’d grown angry, yet known I had no choice but to accept the decision. I had not given up, though, whatever Hesiodos or our benefactor believed.
