I told Cassia all I and Junius had learned on the Oppian Hill. “The patrician called Verinius Marius had gone when the bodyguard did,” I finished. “They left while I was returning the money to Drusus, but either of them might have come back later to fetch it.”
“Yes, I think the bodyguard is significant.” Cassia shuffled through her tablets, reading the notes she’d taken since this adventure had begun. “No matter what, we need to tell the princeps what we’ve learned. This all may mean nothing, and Drusus might simply be leaving to renovate his villa in Baiae. But if not …”
If Drusus was paying the bodyguard to assassinate someone, maybe even Nero himself, a man he clearly hated, and we said nothing, Nero would punish us as soon as he dealt with Drusus. I doubted our benefactor, whoever he was, could do anything about it.
Cassia snapped her tablets closed and stuffed them into her bag. Livius drained his cup and set it on the table.
“I’ll send Albanus up the hill with you,” he said, naming the guard who waited at the foot of the staircase. “I won’t go. It’s always best I keep my distance from the princeps.”
He’d told me why when I’d first met him, after I’d helped his natural father, a retired senator called Priscus. Livius was only a name to Nero, but one that made him twitchy. I agreed that a confrontation between the two was in no one’s interest.
Cassia was too hurried to argue. She snatched up her good cloak and pattered down the stairs to the damp street, striding past Albanus before he could protest that he should take the lead.
I had to lengthen my stride to catch up to Cassia and heard Albanus grumbling behind us.
The misty rain ceased as we pressed through the crowded forum of Augustus, followed by the teeming Forum Romanum to the path that led up the Palatine Hill.
To my alarm, I spied the large bodyguard I’d seen at Drusus’s lingering near the main gate to Nero’s domus. The Praetorian guards who milled here as usual seemed in no way concerned about him, likely viewing him only as a servant waiting for his employer.
The big man saw me. He stilled a moment in recognition but did not approach me or betray worry that I was there.
Cassia sent me an inquiring glance, and I nodded. She pretended to ignore the large man and approached the main gate without slowing.
“Please tell Lucanus Faustinus that Cassia and Leonidas must see the princeps,” she said to the guard there, naming the majordomo who’d admitted us before. “It is urgent.”
The Praetorian stared at her stonily, not accustomed to being told what to do by a female slave.
Fortunately for us, a guard called Servius, who’d assisted us in the past, appeared at his shoulder.
“Let him in,” Servius said. “Leonidas wouldn’t come without a very good reason.” He sent me tight look, acknowledging that any sane man would avoid Nero as much as he could.
“Is he here?” I asked Servius as we hastened inside.
Servius nodded. “Entertaining himself between the games,” he said. “Come, I’ll take you in.”
We followed Servius through the maze of the house under construction, across black-and-white mosaics into an open square garden that held a fountain as large as Livius’s atrium. From there, the domus opened out in all directions. Nero could be lurking in any of its corners.
The majordomo, Faustinus, a slim man with a shaved head, rustled to us from one of the arched openings that encircled the garden.
“He is not to be disturbed.” Faustinus’s face pinched in displeasure as he spoke, but I could not tell whether he was annoyed at us or Nero.
“Is he with Verinius Marius?” I demanded.
Faustinus blinked. “Who?”
“No, not him,” Cassia interrupted. “Where is the princeps? There is danger.”
Faustinus was the most powerful man in this domus, only excepting Nero, but he caught Cassia’s alarm. He was familiar enough with her by now to believe her.
Without a word, he led us swiftly through an inner doorway to narrow corridor. It too was decorated with polished floor mosaics, one depicting Orpheus playing music to soothe the beasts. The walls were painted with murals resembling gilded windows that looked out onto the mountains near Pompeii.
The back of my mind whispered that Nero’s current wife, Poppaea, came from that city. Perhaps he’d had the hall painted for her. I also recalled that Baiae, where Drusus had his villa, lay near it.
After a few tight bends in this corridor, we emerged into a wider space with true windows that looked across the valley to the Oppian Hill. I could make out the rooftop of Livius’s domus from here.
Faustinus held up a hand, and we and the Praetorian guards who’d followed us in halted. Faustinus darted through an opening draped with silk curtains, and I heard Nero’s growl.
“What do you—?” Nero began, then cut off as Faustinus rapidly explained.
