Cassia, who must have been trying to soothe Gallus since she left the site, rested a hand on his. “We will see. If Aelia Cloelius cannot help, I will seek someone who can. All is not lost.”
Gallus heaved a sigh. “I hope you are correct, young Cassia. I will take gifts to the temple of Minerva. Perhaps she will look after us.”
I was anxious to return Cassia home safely and so took our leave. Gallus lived above his shop, and I waited until he’d closed his shutters and bolted the door behind us before we departed.
I stayed close beside Cassia as we made our way home through the warming afternoon. We detoured down a side street to the shop of Quintus the baker to obtain a loaf for our supper and procured a flask of wine from the wine merchant before I locked us into our apartment.
Not until Cassia had the bread laid out on the table, wine poured, and she’d seated herself with stylus in hand, did I tell her every detail of what had transpired with Livius.
“He offered to copy the property’s history for me?” Cassia asked, pleased. “That was courteous of him.”
“Easier than me trying to remember all of it,” I said.
“I look forward to reading it.”
I knew that when Cassia said such a thing, she meant it.
We ate the bread, which was fresh and tasty, talking over the bizarre events of the day. Cassia agreed that the buried ring had meant to focus attention on the site, making Gallus or the workmen want to dig up more of it, and so find the body.
The play skirting treason would draw Nero’s attention—he’d learn about the ring and then the body. With his obsessive focus, he might send men to discover everything about the murder at the site and find out who had committed it.
But I’d given the ring to Nero too soon, and he’d focused on the wrong thing—someone wanting to overthrow him. The playwright—or whoever it was who’d instigated all this—in panic, decided to dispose of anyone who could point to him. He killed the young man in the river by mistake, and still could be after Duilius, Vibius, and anyone else connected with his scheme. Either that or someone else hadn’t wanted us finding the body—perhaps whoever had killed the man in the first place?
We talked it through several times but drew no closer to finding out who Secundus was, the identity of the dead man we’d found, or why the conspirator had decided to use this odd but desperate way of bringing the murder to light.
The body in the field might also have nothing to do with the ring, Cassia pointed out—it was a mere coincidence. She hesitated as she said this. She, like me, did not trust coincidence.
As the evening darkened and I was affixing the shutters across the balcony entrance, I spied one of Livius’s men heading down the lane toward us. He bore a small wooden box, which he handed over to me without a word when I opened the door downstairs. I thanked him, but he only trudged away in silence.
I opened the box as I carried it up and viewed the two narrow scrolls it contained.
“Quick work,” Cassia said approvingly when I laid the box on the table before her. She unrolled the top scroll a few inches. “Very neatly done. Livius’s scribes must be skilled.”
“Likely the best in Rome,” I agreed.
Cassia reached for a stylus, eyes already roving the words. I drank the last of the wine and had decided to take myself to bed when another banging below had me descending.
When I opened the door I found, unexpectedly, the landlord from the nearby popina.
“Your highborn friend has returned to my shop,” he informed me, nervousness in his wavering voice. “He sent me to bring you to him.”
Chapter 17
Cassia merely nodded at me when I returned to the floor above to tell her where I was going. She was already well absorbed in the details scratched on the papyrus before her and did not even look up.
The landlord was gone when I returned to the street. I tramped down the lane and around the corner, making my way to the lower slope and the popina. I paused to peer into the tavern’s dim interior, to assess who was within before I entered.
Nero sat at the table he’d inhabited before, broad shoulders against the wall. Above his head were words some unknown man had scratched that praised the beauty of one Cornelia. I could read at least that. Blasius of the cheating dice was across the room, eyeing Nero balefully. I hoped he’d learned his lesson.
A man stopped next to me in the darkness of the street.
“The one whose coins you lifted the other night,” Scaevola the vigile said, jerking his chin at Nero.
“He gave me the money to buy drinks,” I reminded him.
“Of course.” The vigile’s skeptical tone told me he still did not believe me. I’d been released only because of friends in high places, in his opinion. “Stay away from his purse, and I won’t have to detain you.”
“I will.” I had no intention of being shut into the cellar of the vigiles’ house again.
