My breath returned as I reminded myself that many a man in Rome was called Secundus, and many resembled the landlord.
“Did you see anyone following him?” I repeated.
Blasius glanced about in puzzlement as though looking for anyone running to my apartment now. “Not as such. But he was in a great hurry. Not certain why. They say you killed him.”
“I did not. I was not home.” I’d have to repeat this many times, firmly, before anyone believed me.
“He wanted to talk to you.” Blasius shrugged. “Ah, well. Too late now.”
“Do you have any idea what about?” I persisted. “Did you hear him mention anything?”
“No.” Blasius shook his head, the wine in his cup sloshing over the rim. “But I’ll wager it was important.”
The night before last, the landlord had come to fetch me when Nero had wanted to meet me here. Had he come today on a similar errand?
I saw nothing to indicate Nero was nearby—no lurking praetorian guards, no man in a drab cloak trying to pretend he was a commoner striding along the street. No, the landlord had had something to tell me, something important enough to leave his popina and seek me in the middle of the day.
Without answer, I left Blasius and strode up the hill, Livius and his guards closing around me once again.
“Do you still think Blasius killed him?” Livius asked me.
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think he knows who did, either. He’d have tried to make me pay for the information.”
“Let us try to find out quickly,” Livius said. “Else you might end up being executed for it. I would not like that.”
Kind of him.
When we reached my lane, a few cohorts were still debating about what to do with the body in my doorway. They didn’t know if the landlord had any family, and they were arguing about whether or not to take the dead man to whoever owned the popina. The landlord had been hired to run it—someone else owned the building and the businesses in it.
As I approached, I was astonished to see Laurentius coming toward our street from the direction of the Campus Martius.
With him strode Regulus, his face like thunder. Cassia, fully wrapped in her cloak, hurried after them.
Regulus grabbed Laurentius by the back of his tunic when the young man was ready to bound through the throng toward our still-open door. Cassia swerved from them to join me, and Livius’s guards encompassed her into their protection.
“I thought Laurentius should see,” she said breathlessly.
Laurentius, Regulus tight against his side, stared down at the landlord’s body, his mouth open.
“Yes, that’s him. That’s Secundus.”
“Who in Hades is Secundus?” Regulus demanded.
“He works for a playwright,” Laurentius said.
“No, he doesn’t,” Regulus scoffed. “He runs a popina. I drink there sometimes.”
“No, no. His colleague wrote a play for my family to perform. You see—”
“Stop,” Regulus roared. “Enough of your explanations. If he told you that he wanted to hire you for a play, he lied. He’s lived in the Subura and run that popina as long as I’ve been in Rome.”
Laurentius spied me, and his interest perked. “Do you know what happened, Leonidas?”
I had stilled, Regulus’s words banging through my slow thoughts and stirring things there.
This crime, this entire event, was a crime of the city. From the Emporium to the slums of the Subura to the top of the Esquiline, only in the warrens of Rome could these murders and deceptions have taken place.
A popina’s landlord, a worker on a building site, a backstreet acting troupe, a lavish garden surrounding a rundown villa. Nero could wander these streets, pretending he was one of the people, but he’d never truly understand what it took to survive in the gutters of Rome.
