The woman I assumed to be his mother said something rapidly to Cassia, who answered as rapidly. I continued staring at the boy, who studied me.
“Are you a gladiator?” he asked me in accented street Latin.
“Yes,” I answered the lad.
“Have you come to kill us?” He sounded curious, not afraid.
“No.” I opened my hands to indicate I carried no weapon. “Why did you steal the senator’s purse?”
The boy showed no surprise I knew this, or any shame. He shrugged. “Thought we needed the pennies more than he did.”
The women was now scowling at me, angry but also afraid. If Cassia or I brought the cohorts in to arrest the lad for theft, the entire family could be taken, and executed alongside him.
The boy wasn’t a slave, as Drusus had assumed. Cassia had said his father was a freedman, and his wife, or whatever relation she was to him, wasn’t a slave either, else she’d be currently out working for whoever owned her. The tunics of freedman and slaves were similar, and the lad’s was grubby, so I understood Drusus’s mistake.
“It wasn’t pennies, though,” I said to him.
The boy finally looked worried. “No, it wasn’t.”
The mother asked Cassia a sharp question, probably demanding to know what was being said.
Cassia answered, then the mother, with a grunt of exasperation, dove into the back room and came out again carrying a pouch made of thin leather.
She held it out in front of her as though it contained burning oil. Cassia carefully took it from her and opened the drawstrings.
I peered over Cassia’s shoulder, my breath catching at the pile of gold coins that glimmered within. Again I wondered what idiot would carry such an amount to the games, with only ineffectual bodyguards to look after him.
Cassia asked the boy a question, and he shook his head adamantly.
“It’s all there,” the lad said to me. “If I spent that, I’d be caught right away, wouldn’t I? I meant to put it aside until I found someone who could change the aurei for smaller coins.”
True, if he persuaded a lender or merchant who wasn’t too troubled where his wares came from to exchange the gold for silver or copper coins, the lad could more easily purchase things without anyone questioning him.
Cassia answered before I could. “Never a good idea to trust a crooked moneylender, Ariston. They might tell the cohorts about you if they were ever caught with the gold. I will give these coins back to the senator, and no one will need to know what you did.”
Ariston nodded, looking more disappointed than relieved.
The outer doorway darkened, and all four of us swung around, but Ariston and his mother instantly relaxed. A man Ariston greatly resembled stepped hesitantly in from the street, eyeing me in trepidation.
Cassia quickly spoke to him in Greek, and the man’s shoulders loosened. He gave me a nod.
“Cassia has told us about you,” he said in stilted Latin.
“This is Epikrates,” Cassia said. “His wife is Korinna. I met them on a market street one morning some months ago, when Ariston had broken his wrist. I sent them to Marcianus for him to set it, as he speaks Greek, in addition to being the best medicus in Rome.”
“Very kind of her,” Epikrates said with a fond glance at Cassia. “What brings you here?”
Korinna, tight-lipped, began to explain what had happened, using many gestures at her son, the bag Cassia held, and me. Epikrates’s sun-bronzed face lost color as his wife spoke.
The paterfamilias of a household had the right to beat a son who’d brought danger to the family, even going so far as killing him if he felt it was just.
Epikrates showed no such inclination. He went down on one knee before Ariston and held his son’s gaze before speaking to him in their own language, his voice gentle.
As Ariston listened, his body drooped, and tears appeared in his dark eyes. He squeaked words back to his father, his tone chagrined.
Epikrates stroked Ariston’s hair, gave the tearful boy a quick embrace, then stood to face me.
“He shall never do it again,” the man declared. “He saw how desperate we were becoming. I have been trying to find work in the last days, but I fail. It is December, and everyone takes a holiday. Ariston thought he was helping us.”
