Saturnalian Gifts: A Leonidas the Gladiator Holiday Novella by Ashley Gardner

Author:Ashley Gardner [Gardner, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JA / AG Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

I slept uneasily that night, knowing that a fortune rested in the niche under our floorboards, where Cassia kept our funds. I heard Cassia restless on her pallet by the shutters, uneasy as well.

In the morning, I climbed a narrow street up the Oppian Hill, making for the large domii at the top. I had to walk through the Subura to reach it, which I did as swiftly as possible, aware that I carried more money than the people who lived here might see in a lifetime.

Fortunately, few stirred in the Subura’s lanes at the early hours, the inhabitants sleeping off a night of drink and debauchery. They did this every morning, Saturnalia or no.

The Oppian was a spur of hill directly across from the Palatine, with a marshy valley between the two. Through a gap between buildings at the top of the Oppian, I could view the sprawl of Nero’s Domus Transitoria, still under construction on the opposite hill.

Drusus dwelled in a villa with a vast garden at the summit of the Oppian Hill, not far from the home of Sextus Livius, one of the wealthiest men in Rome.

I doubted Drusus ever spoke to Livius, who was a freedman. Livius ranked far below the patrician Drusus, no matter that Livius’s natural father had been a patrician senator himself and a military hero. Livius had been born a slave, and that cut him out of Drusus’s circles. I don’t think Livius minded much.

The domus Cassia gave me directions to had a colonnaded line of shops on its street wall, most of which were closed for the long holiday. Only a pastry maker was open, serving passers-by sweet treats for their Saturnalia celebrations.

The entrance to Drusus’s house lay in a deep alcove that led back from the shops, a shady place for clients to wait on warm days. Clients were there now, sitting on benches that Drusus was wealthy enough to supply.

I hesitated in the alcove, while the gazes of impatient men who owed allegiance to Drusus turned to me. Men in togas, youths in cloaks, and one large man who wore a freedman’s tunic, his arms bare in defiance of the cold weather. This last watched me with a hard face and deep suspicion.

The freedman must be a bodyguard, but he stood apart from the rest of the clients, as though not wanting to reveal which one employed him.

One of the large double doors stood open for air, but there was no sign of a door slave or the lictors I’d seen with Drusus at the games. I wondered if his sour disposition alone kept his toadies out.

I passed them all and went straight to the open door.

“He’s with a woman,” one of the younger men said in some disgust as I paused on the threshold. “We’ve been waiting for hours.”

“None of your concern,” one of the two toga-clad men snapped. “He will send for you when he is ready.”

I tried to picture the soft-bellied Drusus, with his pinched-up face, lost the throes of passion and could not.

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