A missing or dead slave was not considered important enough to waste time and men on. A rich owner might be compensated for the loss of the slave, but that was all.
When I did not reply, Livius started for the interior of the house. “Let’s see what we can find out about what was on the site.”
He led me inside and to the tablinum, which, in keeping with the rest of the house, was large. Its floor was paved with lavish mosaics, depicting beasts roaming a leafy forest. Livius trod right on a lion’s open mouth and moved to a broad table strewn with scrolls and tablets.
A tall set of shelves climbed the righthand wall, these fitted with grooves to hold more rolled papyrus. Livius shuffled a few scrolls on his desk then went to the shelves, raising his hand unerringly to retrieve two more.
“These are the deeds I signed to the property,” Livius said. “Let us see what they have to tell us.”
He dropped one scroll to the desk and unrolled the second, resting small weights on the papyrus to hold it open to a specific passage.
Leaning on his hands, Livius read over the words. “Hmm.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Your man, Marcianus, was correct.” Livius’s gaze continued to move over the open page. “There was a warehouse on the site previously, but it fell in, due to poor materials. Probably the builder was sold shoddy goods that were promised to be the best. Or the builder paid for the cheapest goods he could find with the money he was allocated and pocketed the rest. It happens.”
“Some of the foundation stones we unearthed were solid.” I recalled the placement of each block, both those that had survived and those that had crumbled. “A good many had fallen apart, though.”
“I’d guess most of the land was cleared by people picking over things,” Livius said. “Any rubble would have been sold off after that, for concrete filler, probably.”
“What was there before that warehouse?” I asked. “Does the paper tell you?”
Livius lifted the small bronze disks that had weighted the scroll and unrolled a portion he had already moved past. “Nothing was there,” he announced after reading. “Though whoever surveyed it in the past found what they thought might be an ancient temple to Mercury. Not unusual. Mercury is the god of merchants. There must have been warehouses or at least a place for unloading goods there for a long time. Someone might have erected a small shrine for good fortune.”
“Mercury is also a god of thieves,” I pointed out, though I wasn’t certain what that signified.
Livius shrugged. “There wasn’t much left of the temple. The land lay empty for a long time before the warehouse was constructed on it—ten years ago,” he read, peering at the paper. “That warehouse collapsed two years later, then the site lay abandoned before the widow of Tertius Vestalis Felix sold it to me earlier this year. There the matter rests.”
I gazed at the scrolls he’d retrieved, wondering what other secrets they held. I knew exactly who could unravel those secrets.
“Would you …” I hesitated, wondering how to ask.
“Lend you the scrolls?” Livius finished for me. “My scribes would have my head if I did that. Records are very important to them, and I must agree. But I could have them copied out for you.”
“In their entirety?” I asked, emboldened.
Livius sent me his faint smile. “Of course. I’ll have them delivered to your place above the wine shop.”
“You are kind.” I wasn’t certain what else to say.
Livius’s smile widened. “You truly have no idea of my gratitude to you, do you? This is a trifling thing. It will be done. Today, in fact.”
I left Livius’s domus before I could grovel any further and tramped back down the hill. On one of its lower curves, near the turning to the Clivus Suburanus, lay Gallus’s shop.
Cassia walked out of it to greet me as I approached. “Gallus is very upset,” she reported in a low voice. “He wavers between worry about the man’s ghost and fear that Sextus Livius will abandon the building project.”
An understandable concern, but I could set his mind at rest on the last question. I ducked into the shop. Its small space was tidy—scrolls were stacked neatly, and tools hung on the walls in straight lines.
Gallus sat in the middle of this neatness on a stool, a cup of wine at his lips. He was gray about the mouth but lifted his head to wearily greet me.
“Livius says the warehouse building will continue,” I informed Gallus before he could speak. “He’s not worried about any curse—as long as it can be erased, I mean.”
Gallus relaxed for a fraction of a second before he tensed again. “Will any building stand on ground tainted by death? The last one fell down,” he finished ominously.
“Because the architectus bought bad materials,” I said, repeating what Livius had speculated. My old master had likewise told me there were plenty of corrupt builders who would do such things. “You are an honest man, and we will build the warehouse to last.”
Gallus shivered. “I only hope Vibius is not exaggerating Aelia Cloelius’s skills.”
