and arrange their delivery to our apartment. Safer than me walking home with them.
Celnus wasn’t pleased, but he bowed and obediently took the things away.
Priscus saw me to the atrium himself, waving me off, then squaring his shoulders as the doorman went out and returned with the middle-class man. I sent Priscus a sympathetic look as I continued into the vestibule.
Before I left, I asked the door lad to tell Celnus I wished to speak to him. When the majordomo emerged, I repeated my request to encourage Priscus to remain inside and send for me if he wished to go anywhere. Celnus again was torn between irritation and agreement, but promised to do what I asked.
I stepped outside into the rain. The two freedmen I’d conversed with gave me a hearty farewell, and I started down the hill.
As I walked home, I kept an eye out for the elusive vigile, but I never saw him. I was not surprised—a man who patrolled the streets every night would know the back ways through Rome better than I.
It was a bit early for a bath—the most popular hours for them were after the midday meal—but I went in any case, wanting to wash away the sleep, sweat, and grit from the city I’d picked up as I chased after the vigile. The bathhouse was mostly empty, only a few men sitting naked on a bench in the caldarium.
I took time to go through the bodily exercises I’d performed every day at the ludus before the lone attendant swiped off my sweat and dirt with a strigil. I was use to exercising more often, and the last few days of inactivity had made me edgy.
The heat of the bathhouse did nothing to soothe me, and I soon plunged into the pool in the empty frigidarium, swimming to relieve my tension.
That also did not help, because someone came upon me while I glided through the water and tried to hold my head under.
Chapter 14
The greatest lesson Aemil had taught me was not to panic in a dangerous situation. Trying to raise my head from the water against the strength of the man’s hands would do me no good.
Lungs burning, I dove farther down into the pool, swimming away with a powerful pump of arms. His hold broke, and I was free. I surfaced at the far end of the small pool, gasping for breath.
I made sure to come up with my back to a tiled wall, so he couldn’t get behind me. A large bronze fish poked out of the wall beside me, spilling clear water from its gaping mouth.
The room was empty. The waves I’d created sloshed over the pool’s sides to wet floor mosaics depicting fish, seaweed, and Neptune’s chariot.
I saw no one, heard no one, the sound of the fountain beside me loud in the stillness. The baths didn’t fill up until afternoon, and my assailant had caught me alone. Which meant the man, whoever he was, had been following me.
The vigile? No, the hands that had held me were thick and strong, and the vigile was spindly. My attacker was a professional, though, knowing exactly where and how hard to push to keep me under.
I scrambled from the pool, cascading more water over the floor, and snatched up my towel, which I’d left high on a shelf, drying off quickly. Even the frigidarium’s attendant had vanished, and I wondered if he’d been bribed.
I changed my mind about the attendant when I saw him asleep on a stool just outside the room. He had big hands, like my attacker, but they hung limply on either side of him as he snored hard.
I retrieved my clothes in the changing room and dressed, keeping a wary eye around me. I shared the room with an aging patrician, surrounded by his servants, none of whom paid the slightest attention to me.
Avoiding the deepest crowds, I walked quickly home. An assassin’s knife could find my back in a throng, with no one being the wiser, including me.
This was the second time in a short while that someone had tried to kill me. I’d been attacked the night before I’d escorted Priscus to Ostia. Who wanted me dead?
Regulus, of course. He’d vowed to kill me. But I knew Regulus’s fighting grip, and the man who’d tried to drown me today hadn’t had it. Nor had the assailant on the street possessed Regulus’s tread and movement. Also, Regulus would want to face me, to jeer at me