“Bring me breakfast,” I said. My head ached like fury, and I wasn’t happy to be alone. Lucia usually stayed with me until I was ready to leave.
“Do you have the coin for it?” Floriana demanded. “And for Lucia?”
I rolled over. I wore nothing, but Floriana, who had seen any number of males with all sorts of bodies, didn’t blink.
“Coin?” I asked muzzily.
Floriana folded her arms. “You’re a freedman. Means your masters don’t fund your meals and your women anymore. I need paying.”
She had a point, one I hadn’t given a thought to. Aemil had paid Floriana handsomely for me to march to Lucia whenever I wished. I always chose Lucia, she with her quick smile and skilled hands. I pretended to myself that she liked me, and I knew I liked her.
Now I’d have to pay Floriana and buy my own breakfast, but I hadn’t the least idea what it would cost or where I’d get the money.
I lay back down and put a hand over my eyes. The sun was merciless and my head throbbed. “I’ll find the coin.”
The smooth end of a stick poked me in the ribs. I growled and lunged for it, but Floriana danced away.
“Out, Leonidas. I need the bed.”
I sat up. Out where? I dimly remembered Regulus stealing my cell last night. Now Floriana was turning me out of this one.
So this was freedom. Nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, and no money to buy even my basic needs.
Aemil had offered a solution to me. Remain at the ludus, train others to kill, fight a few exhibition matches to show off my prowess. That was what former gladiators did, Aemil among them. Perhaps one day I’d start my own ludus.
No more death.
I growled at Floriana. Any number of men, gladiators included, shrank from that growl, but not Floriana. She knew me too well.
Smothering a grunt of pain, I heaved myself from the bed. I towered over Floriana, filling the cell, but she never flinched.
“Man outside wants to speak to you,” she said as I reached for my tunic. “Wants to hire you, perhaps. If he does, first person you pay with what he gives you is me.”
I gave her a nod, finding this only fair. I couldn’t imagine who waited for me, and I didn’t much care. I wanted only to sleep and not wake for several days. I’d done that before, after horrific matches. When Xerxes had died, I’d not emerged for almost a month.
It was not easy to don my tunic while I still held the sword, but even now I could not make myself release it. My hand was cramped, locked around the wooden hilt.
I managed to slide on the tunic, the sword tearing the fabric. Floriana watched me with great amusement. I gave her another growl as I ducked out of the cell, nearly banging my head on the low lintel.
The house was quiet as I strode down its middle passage, making for the square of too-bright sunshine that awaited me at the end.
I emerged from the doorway into December coolness and the glare of light on pavement. The sun was well up, and even the high buildings that lined the street provided no shade.
A small man in a fine tunic waited outside. He had a neat, slim face, trimmed hair, and wore shoes rather than sandals, well-made pieces of leather that fit his feet exactly.
“Leonidas the Spartan.” The greeting held a touch of derision.
I gave him a curt nod.
“The gods have smiled upon you,” the man went on in the same tone. “Freedom and a benefactor. How fortunate you are.”
“Benefactor …” I said in confusion. I had no benefactor that I knew of.
“The person responsible for your freedom. He has followed your career, noting every victory, and decided you deserved to walk away from the games a champion. I have been sent to tell you that.” The man eyed me with some disparagement.
“Who is he? Who are you?”
“I am called Hesiodos. You need to remember that name because I can give you no other.”
Hesiodos carried the slightly pompous sneer many Greeks did—Rome was still rustic backwater to a man from mighty Athens.
Hesiodos wore the garb of a freedman, but I guessed he’d begun life as slave. His contemptuous regard told me he didn’t want me making comparisons between us. We were both freedmen now, but I was infamis, the lowest of the low. All gladiators were, current and former.
When I said nothing, he continued, “What I mean is, I am forbidden to give you your benefactor’s name.”
I’d find this odd if I could think more clearly. Most Romans who assisted others wanted the fact shouted far and wide, so all would admire their generosity. The recipients of their charity would be obligated to the benefactor for life.
But perhaps the man—or woman—might not want it known that they’d raised a gladiator from his bondage. We were animals fighting for the pleasure of others. No pride in rescuing one. If it were a woman, she would definitely keep it a secret. Hesiodos had said “he,” but he’d just admitted he was hiding the benefactor’s identity.
I gave Hesiodos another nod to show I understood then jerked my thumb at the door behind me. “I owe Floriana a sestertius. Pay her, if you will.”
Hesiodos didn’t move. “You misunderstand. This person has not bestowed a legacy upon you. You will have to work for your pay, as any other freedman in this city. Your benefactor has provided you freedom, a place to live, and a slave to serve your needs.”
This benefactor sounded less and less reasonable. “What place? And I don’t need a slave.”
“Your benefactor seems to think you do. Someone to keep an eye on you and report to me.” He flicked his fingers toward a corner of a wall across the street.
A bundle of clothes that had crouched in a sliver of shade made its way across to us, stepping carefully in the damp street. It was a woman, swathed and cloaked like a patrician matron, but her plain palla and sandals told me she was a slave.
“This is Cassia,” Hesiodos said. “She will not belong to you—she too is in debt to your benefactor. She will look after you, and provide you anything you need.”
The woman reached us. Instead of bowing her head and cowering behind Hesiodos, she moved a fold of her palla and looked directly at me.
Brown eyes regarded me from the face of a young woman I would guess not far past her twentieth year.
I saw in those eyes, beneath the fear of being handed to a gladiator, a determination that blazed forth more potently than any I’d beheld in the brutal fighters I’d faced in the arena.
Chapter 2
I couldn’t see much of Cassia other than the eyes that skewered me and a tendril of very black hair that leaked from beneath the cloth. She had a round face and light brown skin of the peoples of the eastern shores of the Mare Nostrum, but beyond that I could tell nothing about her.
Hesiodos observed this meeting without expression. “Cassia will lead the way to your lodgings. Settle in and wait for instructions.”
“Instructions.” I jerked my head to him. “For what?”
Hesiodos gave me an indifferent shrug. “Time will tell. Good day. Cassia knows how to send word to me.”
Without a nod, gesture, or any other farewell, he turned on his well-fitted heel and walked away, quickly swallowed by the crowd of a Roman morning. My hand tightened around the rudis as I watched him go.