Blood of a Gladiator - Ashley Gardner Page 0,58

a vase with my visage on it, when it was no longer wanted.

I curled my fingers on the table. “You have things now. I won’t take them from you.”

Cassia looked up at me, one wisp of hair straggling from her perfect coif. “If Regulus has you arrested for murdering Floriana, they will be taken. I might be arrested with you, as your accomplice.”

She spoke the truth. Though Cassia had nothing to do with the murder, she might be killed simply because she belonged to me. Even if she was spared, she’d have no one to protect her if I was executed.

I tore another hunk of bread from the round loaf. “Then we had better prove I didn’t do it.”

Cassia wiped her eyes and nodded. She took up her stylus again, making shaky marks in the wax, and we said nothing more about it.

I finished breakfast and went out. I brought a cloak this time, as the January air was cold, coming hard on the heels of the rain. The streets were wet, glistening under the morning sun.

Neither Cassia nor I had heard word from Celnus that Priscus or his son had moved from his house, though I would check on him today. Nero’s adamance unnerved and puzzled both of us.

I left Cassia going over the sketches she’d made of the place Floriana had been killed. I could see nothing in them, but I had already discovered that Cassia’s thoughts worked differently from mine.

Men were tearing apart Floriana’s house when I reached it, hammers bashing holes in walls, flakes of the paintings on the outside falling to the pavement. The painted buttocks of a man drifted away on the wind.

The architectus I’d met here, Gnaeus Gallus, had not come today. The foreman watching the workers, who were stripped to loincloths for the heavy work despite the cold, faced me impatiently as I asked about him.

Gallus had told me his shop was on the Clivus Pullius, and the overseer now told me exactly where.

The Clivus Pullius was a winding path that led up the Oppian Hill. On its first curve, near the spot where it intersected with the Clivus Suburanus and the Vicus Patricius, I found Gallus’s shop.

The architect’s small office did not open to the street like the others around it, but I saw the painting of a libella on the wall—an A-shaped frame from which hung a plumb line. I peered in through the open door and saw Gallus standing over a tall table, drawings spread before him.

“Ah,” he said when he spied me. “My gladiator friend who is a builder at heart. Have you decided to lend your assistance?”

I wished I could. The small room brought back memories. I’d done much manual labor, as the builder utilized my strong back and arms, but I also remembered the scattered tools, the drawings, the scent of marble dust and travertine, the muddy smell of concrete.

The man I’d worked for hadn’t held the lofty title of architectus, but essentially he had been that, working in a small provincial town near Rome, building homes for the plebs but assisting with a few villas as well. I’d followed him in wonder, silently absorbing all.

“I want to ask you about Floriana’s house,” I said to Gallus. “The lupinarius.”

Gallus was surprised but nodded. “Ah, yes. The new owner has decided to pull it down, though I told him the walls and roof could be saved. He wishes to put in a row of shops and apartments above it, another insula in a city full of them. Well, at least I can make sure the thing is stable.”

Insulae falling down around their inhabitants, killing many, was unfortunately not rare. Landlords wanted the buildings constructed as cheaply as possible and didn’t bother with maintenance afterward.

“Who is the new owner? You said his name was … Livius?”

“Sextus Livius.” Gallus scratched his forehead, leaving a streak of charcoal from his marking stick. “He owns an insula on the Aventine and shops in the Carinae. Known for buying up derelict properties and imposing his will on them.”

“Who did he buy it from?” I asked. “Floriana?”

“No, I do not believe the lady of the house owned it. Let me see …” Gallus rummaged through a haphazard stack of tablets and rolls of papyrus, opening scrolls and tossing them aside. Cassia would be appalled at his careless system.

“Ah, here we are. This is a copy of the contract. Livius bought the building from one—let me see—a lady, Porcia Caelius, wife of a senator