The first time I set eyes on Avitus was on the street outside the morning I fetched Marcianus.”
“Perhaps you simply didn’t notice him before.”
I shook my head. “I noted every person at Floriana’s each time I went there. I made certain no enemy was within—I couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t try to siphon my blood as I slept.”
Her brows went up. “Siphon your blood?”
“The blood of a gladiator cures many ills. Did you not know this?”
“I have heard such a thing, but it’s absurd.” Cassia carried the cloth to the balcony and shook the crumbs from it. She returned to the table and sat down, folding the fabric with precise creases. “I’ve read every treatise in Greek and Latin I’ve been able to find on disease and medicine, including Hippocrates, and there is no evidence that your blood carries magical healing powers.”
I too had my doubts—if my blood were so magical, why didn’t I heal more quickly? I’d taken a bad blow early in my career that had laid me up for a month. I’d survived only because of Marcianus’s skill.
“In any case, I never saw Avitus before that day,” I stated firmly.
Cassia rummaged in the box beside the table and pulled out her inevitable tablet, opening it and carefully marking the wax with her stylus.
“Why do you do that?” I asked irritably.
Cassia glanced up at me, dark eyes framed with black lashes. “Do what?”
“Write everything.” I waved my hand over the tablet. “Keep your records. What good are they? Did they save you from being sold at the slave market? From having to work for a gladiator and be needled by the women at the fountains?”
Her stylus froze, and her face tensed. “My father taught me to do so. It helps me make sense of the world.”
But her father had died, leaving his daughter alone and unprotected.
“Why were you sold?” I asked abruptly. “You could have carried on your father’s work at your mistress’s villa. Even if they didn’t trust a woman in their scribe’s position, you could have assisted the next one. You are obviously skilled in reading and writing. And organizing,” I added. Our apartment had been orderly from the day we moved in.
Cassia’s color rose. “The mistress decided I should go.”
“Why?” I asked again, but I thought I knew.
I had observed not a few moments ago that Cassia was a comely young woman. When her father had been alive, he’d have protected her, holding a high enough position in the household to have some influence over its master, or at least to earn his respect.
Once her father had gone, Cassia, a slave because she was the daughter of a slave, would have been alone and vulnerable.
“Which was it?” I gentled my voice. “The paterfamilias? Or his son?”
Chapter 16
Cassia kept her head bowed for a long time after my question. When she raised it, her gaze remained on the table.
“The master,” she whispered.
Sudden rage gripped me. I did not need to ask her for the details. The master of the house could have anyone he liked to slake his needs, and his wife could do nothing. As long as a man had affairs with those of a lower station, woman or man, he would not be censured.
I would not ask whether the master had simply made known he wanted her or if he’d acted on it. By the haunted look in Cassia’s eyes, plus the deep fear she’d had of me when I’d first met her, I suspected he’d acted on it.
While a wife could not stop her husband chasing his pleasure, she could at least make certain her rival was out of the house.
“So the mistress sold you,” I finished.
“It happened very fast. She never even spoke to me. The majordomo of our household put me in a cart, and one of the master’s guards drove me to Rome and to the market. I was not even allowed to bring any of my things.” Silent tears welled from her eyes to spill down her cheeks.
I wanted to press her hand in comfort, but did not think my touch would be welcome. I knew what it was to be used, to be fondled and stroked without assent, because I was there for other people’s entertainment. That was why I was infamis, made for nothing but spectacle. I might be hailed as a hero of the games, followed about in admiration, and have drawings of myself on everything imaginable, but in the end, I could be discarded, like