“Based on one cup of wine, Duilius trusted you?”
Again, the shrug. I wished his wife was here—I suspected Aelia would have a clear explanation for everything. “I don’t see why not,” Vibius said. “It had more to do with the fact that I worked on the building site than my class or my friendship with him.”
I went silent as I wondered at the logistics of the ring buried for Vibius to stumble upon. Why not simply hand it off to him at a tavern? What was it about this site that was important?
I spun away from Vibius and marched to the workers who were arranging the new blocks.
“Have you found anything here?” I asked them. “When you were digging out the old foundation, did anything unusual turn up?”
They only stared at me, and I remembered they didn’t understand me.
The foreman, a sturdy Roman, answered. “We dug up nothing but stones.”
“Are you sure?” I demanded.
The foreman grew annoyed. “I told you, gladiator.”
I’d be more polite, but I was impatient and frustrated. I advanced on the foreman, and he backed away in alarm.
“Dig,” I said. “There.” I pointed to smooth ground in the spot I’d found the ring.
“Why?” The foreman pretended not to be intimidated by me, but his workers moved uneasily.
“Yes, why?” Vibius asked, in more curiosity than belligerence. “What are you looking for, Leonidas?”
“I don’t know,” I had to say.
My adamance had attracted the attention of Gallus and Cassia. Both arrived as Vibius asked his question.
“Yes, what do you hope to find?” Gallus asked. “An important monument of some sort? That would be exciting. Though it would ruin my building plans.”
I tried to rein in my frustration. I did not know at all why I wanted to see what this ground revealed. Gallus, Vibius, and the foreman had every reason to refuse. They likely thought me mad.
“I agree with Leonidas,” Cassia’s soft voice cut through our rumblings. “I think it very important we find out exactly what this site was used for in the past.”
“There you have it then,” Gallus said. “Let’s see what the ground reveals.”
The foreman was poised to argue. Why should their assignment be changed on the word of a gladiator and a woman—a woman slave at that? But Gallus held ultimate authority, and not long later, the men bent their backs with sharpened sticks and spades to once more open the ground where the old foundations had lain.
I moved in with a spade to help, and even Vibius joined in. Cassia, with Gallus, who absent-mindedly clutched a scroll he’d been showing her, watched in anticipation.
At first, we found only what would be expected—gravel, a few broken pieces of pottery from discarded amphora, chips from the previous foundation.
A light but steady rain began to fall, one that didn’t quite wash away our sweat.
My spade lodged on something hard, hidden in the earth. We cleared away the dirt to find yet another foundation stone, this one buried so deep there it was no wonder we’d missed it.
I switched the spade for a pole and used my deepest strength to wedge out the block. The workers and foreman joined in to help me, they now as curious as Gallus. The stone rose up and up until we pushed it onto its side in the soft dirt.
I gazed down into the hole the block revealed and stilled.
Cassia was the first person next to me, Gallus unable to hold her back. Gallus, Vibius, and the foreman peered around me.
“Oh,” Cassia said.
A body curled there, one dead long enough to have lost the flesh from its bones. The damp earth, coupled with flooding of the Tiber, had rotted everything else away—clothes, hair, skin, internal organs. Brown and thin, the skeleton lay forlorn and forgotten.
“Minerva,” Gallus breathed. “Please don’t tell me this site is cursed.”
