“An older man. Secundus?”
“Possibly.” Cassia straightened the tablets I’d displaced. They were closed, but I’d moved them a few inches, and the top one had sat crookedly on its fellows.
“So the ring is a fake?” I thought of Nero wearing it like a badge, as though he’d negate any idea that it belonged to an ancient family by claiming it. “Nero wouldn’t give it back to me, by the way.”
“I did not truly think he would,” Cassia said, though she sounded disappointed. “There is nothing to say whether the ring is real or a forgery. The vendor who handled it sells what he picks up from travels or from plebeian or Equestrian families selling off estates. When someone inherits an old ring, or a carved box, or a scroll they can’t read, they’ll sell it to a man like this vendor for quick cash. The ring might truly have belonged to a man of Tarquinius’s lineage or may have belonged to no one important and altered by Secundus or the playwright for the play.”
“How do we know which?” I asked.
“We can’t at the moment.” Again, Cassia’s displeasure at Nero’s obstinacy rang through. “The point is, Secundus purchased it—I will assume it was Secundus—so he didn’t inherit it, nor was he entrusted to it by Tarquinius’s lost heir. That means, there is no plot here to overthrow the princeps.”
I relaxed but only a little. “Unless the dead man at the site is connected to the plot somehow.”
“Perhaps.” Cassia’s brows furrowed. “It is odd, though. Why the elaborate ruse with the play, and Laurentius and his family? A bit messy and uncontrollable. If he wanted to draw attention to the body and the site, he certainly has.”
“Risking his or her life to do so.” I scooped in more stew before I spoke again. “A foolish risk.”
“This man who died must have been very important to whoever is behind this. Does this playwright know exactly how the man was murdered and buried, or did he only suspect he lay beneath that site? Is the playwright seeking answers too? If he has waited ten years for news, that might make him a bit mad, I’d think.”
People disappeared all the time in Rome. Journeys were hazardous. A man or woman could be murdered for the few coppers in their purse, their bodies pushed into the Tiber. Wondering if the person who went out would ever come back, the waiting when they did not, could drive a man insane. I imagined myself trying to find Cassia if she went missing, knowing I’d go to any lengths to find out what happened to her.
I could see the man sitting in a small room like this one, scratching out pages of a fake play and going over his plans for revealing the crime, hoping that the murderer would pay. He’d had fare too much time to think about it, obsess about it.
Cassia continued to speak through my musing, and I focused my tired attention on her again.
“I don’t believe Secundus actually exists,” she was saying.
I sopped up the remains of my stew with a hunk of bread and tried to speak coherently. “How can he not exist? The vendor sold him the ring, and he took the ring and the play to Duilius.”
“I mean that he was hired to play a part. Secundus probably isn’t his real name.”
She was likely right. I continued to munch bread while Cassia went on with her speculations.
“I imagine Duilius and Laurentius were meant to go through with producing the play. It would have drawn Nero’s wrath, which would have fallen upon Duilius and family, and Vibius, who’d found and delivered the ring. The praetorian guard and the cohorts would investigate—Nero might have even asked you to investigate.” Cassia pointed the end of her stylus at me. “Secundus would evaporate, and Vibius would have had to give his weak explanation that he’d been paid to ‘find’ the ring at the building site. The body would be revealed. The cohorts and praetorians could not ignore it and would have to find out who the dead man truly was.”
She finished and finally lifted cup of wine I’d set before her.
“But we got in the way,” I supplied as she wet her throat.
“A mercy we did.” Cassia set down her cup and dabbed wine from her lips. “Now we can keep Vibius, Laurentius, and Duilius out of it. They’d have been arrested, even if they’d been innocent of the plot. Vibius’s wife might have been arrested along with him, and her brother Cloelius too. Cloelius is from an old and prominent family, the sort who dislikes Nero extremely, so he’d be suspect just for that.”
Nero, in his rage, might care whether the conspiracy was merely a hoax and the people involved dupes. He’d punish them all to warn others not to try such a thing again.
“The person who started all this must now be trying to clear up behind him,” I said. “He or she attempted to kill Laurentius, but I’d already hidden him. They’ll try with Secundus …”
“You are right.” Cassia’s glee faded. “I wish we could warn Secundus, but we still don’t know who he is. The vendor describes every older man in Rome. He didn’t even note which class he was.” Her disapproval of his inefficiency rang anew.
“Did the plotter have the ring made and then sold to the vendor?” I asked. “Or did he spy it there, hatch the plot, and hire Secundus to purchase it?”
“We won’t know until we find this person and ask,” Cassia said.
I gazed out the open balcony to the clearing skies. “He—or she—could be anyone in Rome. We don’t even know if it’s a man or woman.”
“If we discover the identity of the dead man, we will know who orchestrated these events.” Cassia spoke confidently. “He must have been very important for someone to go through the trouble of drawing attention to his body. He was someone’s son, or brother, husband, or lover.”
I was not certain how such knowledge would narrow the search. Everyone had lost someone close. My mother had died when I’d been too young to help her. My mentor, who I’d considered my substitute father, had been murdered. There was no shortage of loss in Rome.
I took a melancholy sip of wine, then glanced sharply at Cassia. “How did you find out all this? I warned you not to go out on your own.”
