realized I was a fighting man, not a weak target. He hadn’t expected me to attack.
I continued on my way down the now-empty street, my back itching as I strode along.
When I entered the apartment, I found the detritus from supper gone, the bowls, which I assumed were ours now, stacked neatly, my stool against the wall. Cassia sat at the table, stifling a yawn as I entered.
“You should sleep,” I told her. “You don’t have to wait up for me.”
I was bone tired, ready to fall on my pallet and not wake until I had to. Cassia rose and took my cloak, again shaking it out and hanging it from its peg. Then she returned to the table, opened her ever-present tablet, and made a note.
“What are you writing now?” I asked irritably.
“The time you came in.”
“Why?” I found all this writing baffling. What was the point? Was she making notes to show Hesiodos? And why?
Cassia shrugged. “It might be useful later.”
“Go to sleep.” I untied my sandals and stepped out of them, shuffling my way to the pallet in the alcove.
Cassia pattered behind me, retrieved the sandals, and placed them against the wall in a neat line.
I started to admonish her for tidying up after me, but then decided that would be senseless. I also had the feeling she tidied not because she believed it her job, but because a shoe out of place annoyed her. Cassia liked a sense of order I didn’t understand.
“I will wake you before the first hour,” she said as I collapsed onto the bed and settled on my back. “We are to meet the senator at the Porta Trigemina at sunrise.”
I rose on my elbows. “We? You cannot come with us.”
“I think I had better. The senator spoke of grave danger, which means there is a chance we won’t be paid. It is important we retrieve our fee as soon as possible and protect it until we settle our accounts.”
Cassia was the most puzzling woman I’d ever met. “I’m the best fighter in Rome—no one will take my payment from me.”
“Not by force, no.”
My eyes narrowed. “You think Priscus will trick his way out of paying me?”
Cassia shook her head. “He seems an honest man, which is probably why he is in such danger. His slaves, on the other hand, know they have a soft place, and will do all they can to keep his money in their house. I know how to not let them.”
“Priscus will pay me in Rome, not Ostia. When I return him safely.”
“That remains to be seen. What if he decides to stay in Ostia? Or breaks the journey elsewhere? Or sends you back alone? I ought to be there to collect our payment at the point you are dismissed, or we might never see it.”
I sat all the way up, and Cassia stepped back in some alarm. But the set of her chin told me she’d not give in on her point.
“If you come with us to Ostia, I have to protect you as well as the senator.” I hadn’t forgotten the ruffian who’d accosted Cassia outside the barber’s and how angry the incident had made me.
“I will be one more servant with the other servants. No one will notice me.”
It was true she moved silently through the streets, slipping between people as though she didn’t want to touch them. Priscus wouldn’t be traveling alone, but have a caravan of his servants to cater to his every need.
I imagined that if I forbade Cassia, which I had a right to do, she’d find a way to follow. I’d never encountered a woman with such a strong will, but maybe scribes were a different breed.
I flopped back down to the blankets. “Wake me before the first hour then.”
I arranged the covers around me and turned my face to the wall, rapidly sinking into sleep. I heard Cassia scurry toward her own pallet, and her footsteps sounded distinctly satisfied.
In the morning, I joined Priscus’s party on the far side of the Aventine at the Porta Trigemina, the triple gate to the Via Ostiensis.
Fog coated the city. The nearby river lent its murk to the mists rolling from the hills and we stood in a haze, the gates a dark bulk in the stone wall. The arches of a nearby aqueduct were lost in the white, like a ghostly ruin.
At the blare of a horn signaling the dawn hour, we proceeded through the gate. We were among the first