I released Cassia in an instant. In another second, I’d have broken her wrist.
“Dreaming,” I said as I sat up, catching my breath. “Never reach for me when I’m asleep. Floriana uses a stick.”
“Floriana?”
“Woman of the house where I slept last night.” I gestured vaguely, reminding Cassia of where she’d met me this morning.
If it was still this morning. The sun slanted into the room, partially blocked by buildings around us. I had no idea of the time or if this was even the same day.
“It is the tenth hour.” Cassia remained very still, out of my reach. “You’ve slept a long time. I brought food for you.”
I rolled up from the pallet, my tunic musty. I needed to bathe. I was also hungry. “Bread?” I recalled asking her to fetch that.
Cassia had backed away when I’d risen, and now she moved to the table. I stumbled after her in bare feet, too hungry to bother with sandals.
The table was now lengthwise near the open door to the makeshift balcony. One stool rested on the side of the table, and the other had been tucked into the corner.
Covered bowls and several baskets had been neatly placed on the table, along with an eating bowl and a spoon. I lifted the cloth from one basket and found a loaf of the round Roman bread we consumed daily. The other basket held olives, plump and shining.
The covered bowls contained lentil stew and another stew with meat in it. The smallest pot held a smelly, fishy concoction called garum.
I immediately dished out the lentils and tore off a hunk of bread, sitting down to enjoy my feast. A handful of olives went into my mouth. I didn’t touch the meat dish or the garum.
“Are you not eating?” I asked once I’d swallowed a few spoonfuls.
Cassia had perched on the stool in the corner, hands in her lap. “You will allow me to eat?”
“Why would I not allow you to eat?” I said around my next mouthful. “If you eat, you stay alive. Besides, you carried all this back. You must be hungry.”
Cassia rose and slid her stool inch by inch closer to the table. She removed a smaller eating bowl and spoon from a sack that had been behind the table and carefully set the bowl in the exact center of her side.
As I continued to inhale the lentil soup, which was decent if not the best I’d ever had, she delicately ladled out a portion of the meat stew.
“Eat all of that if you like,” I said.
The ladle hesitated. “There is enough for both of us.”
I shook my head. “I don’t eat much meat. I’ll have this.” I lifted my bowl to my mouth, drained the liquid, and spooned in more of the lentils.
Neither of us touched the garum.
“Eat that too,” I said, pointing to it. “I won’t.”
Cassia dipped a minuscule portion of bread into her meat soup. “No, thank you. I dislike garum.”
Most Romans loved the stuff and ate it by the bucketful. I was considered odd for not doing so.
“I don’t like it either.” I tore off a huge hunk of bread. “It’s disgusting.”
Something glinted in Cassia’s gaze. “I rather loathe it, in fact.”
“I more than loathe it. I think it should be buried in a field and then the field burned.”
We both eyed the pot.
“I bought it because I thought you’d eat like a Roman.” She studied the innocent round-lidded pot for a moment. “What shall we do with it?”
“Throw it into a sewer,” I grunted. “No one will notice.”
A tiny smile touched Cassia’s mouth, transforming her from frightened rabbit to human being. “It shall be done.”
I pictured it—in the dark of the night, a heavily cloaked woman tiptoeing through the cart-laden streets with the pot of garum under her arm, furtively glancing about before she shoved it through a hole in the pavement to the sewers beneath us. For the first time in a long while, I wanted to laugh.
“How did you pay for all this?” I asked. “I thought we had little money.”
Cassia pushed aside her half-eaten stew and opened a tablet, revealing rows of scratches in the wax. “The landlord of the tavern and also the baker gave the food to me with the understanding that we will pay for a ten-night’s worth of meals at the end of these coming ten days. Next time, we will pay ahead and have whatever we wish until our credit comes to an end.”
“Pay with what?” Any time I’d been out on my own and hungry, I’d bought bread or a salad with the few coins in my belt pouch. If I had no coins, I simply stayed hungry until I returned to the ludus.
“The money you will make as a guard, or teaching others to fight, or whatever it is you do.”
“No one has hired me,” I pointed out.
“Not yet.”
I lifted my bowl and spooned the remainder of the lentils into my mouth. I chewed noisily and swallowed, then wiped out the bowl with the last of the bread. “Aemil always made arrangements with people and then told me to go do the job.”
“Because you were a slave. Now you’re a freedman. You find your own work.”
I hadn’t the least idea how. “Should I stand in the street until someone asks me to do something? I think they will mostly tell me, loudly, to get out of the way.”
Cassia took up her stylus. “I admit to you, I do not know much about the ways of the city. I lived in my mistress’s villa, which was far out in the country, and went into Neapolis only occasionally. A lovely city. Nothing like Rome. Neapolis is a very old town, settled by Greeks long ago. Like Herculaneum.”
I’d been to both places when hired out for games, but I remembered nothing remarkable about either.
“I could ask Aemil.” I did not want to go back to the ludus, my hand out, when I’d snarled at Aemil that I’d never return. He’d informed me with confidence that I would.
Cassia must have seen my reluctance, because she said quickly, “I will find out.”
I studied her, a neat young woman with her hair combed into a tidy coil, her fingernails clean and pared. I’d already dropped broth onto my tunic while hers was spotless. I could not imagine this dainty morsel striding out finding work for a gladiator.
“How?”
“The family I worked for had many connections in Rome. Those people would come to Campania, or, rarely we would travel here. I know the slaves and freedmen and freedwomen who work in their houses. If a patrician needs a bodyguard, he will send a slave out to the Forum to look about and employ one for him. I will go to the Forum and see who I find there. I am bound to recognize someone, and if their masters do not need your services, they might point me to one who does.”
I supposed her reasoning logical. I’d never had to think about such things before. I’d only done for so long, that I knew nothing else.
“In the morning, then.” I flexed my empty hand and glanced quickly at the wooden sword on the shelf, as though reassuring myself it was still there.
She shook her head. “This afternoon. Those left still looking to hire a guard will be growing worried and won’t wish to return home until they’ve fulfilled their commission. I will likely be able to fetch a better fee than if I wait until morning.”
More things I’d not thought of. “Be in before dark. The streets of Rome at night are not safe.”