“Just do your job,” Malchus said, his face set.
We headed northeast toward the Esquiline and before long turned on to the Vicus Sandaliarius. The street was choked with commerce, the smell of leather and men who balanced piles of hides on their shoulders-deer and cattle and pig. The tanning workrooms and smithies were open to the street, but other stretches kept their secrets behind unmarked doors and blank walls littered with graffiti. Shopkeepers were cranking down their awnings; those directly across from each other almost touched above the worn paving stones, concealing those beneath in yellow shade.
We were making our way through the throng when I felt a sharp tug at my neck. I looked back just in time to see Valens deliberately trip a poor fellow heading in the opposite direction. The man scrambled to his feet with dagger in hand. That was unmannerly, I thought. Perhaps it was an accident; in any case Valens should apologize. The thin, unwashed creature crouched in a fighting stance, looking for his assailant. To my surprise, a second man joined him, also armed, the hole where his left eye had been drawing as much of my attention as his knife. Street traffic recoiled in an arc around them, but Valens stepped into the open space. All at once, it became eerily quiet. Good, Valens will say his obligatories and we can be on our way. The one-eyed man spoke first. “Go about your business, now, there’s a good fellow.”
“I am about my business,” Valens said. “That’s a fine purse you’ve got strung about your neck.”
“Move off,” the first man threatened, “or we’ll stripe you good and all.”
Valens ignored him and pointed to the second man. “What’s that there? Why it looks like a bulge in your tunic. A purse-shaped bulge, or I’ll kiss Laverna’s chalk-white ass. Seems like one’d be enough for any honest man.”
“We’re done talkin’,” said the one-eyed man. The two of them moved toward Valens, who casually reached inside his cloak and withdrew his gladius. Three eyes widened. Before One-eye and his friend could even contemplate a change in tactics, Valens was bracketed by Betto and Malchus, each with swords drawn.
“Now,” Valens said, pointing with the bright tip of his weapon, “put your toothpicks away and hand it over.” One-eye glowered at his partner, muttering “idiot” to his partner as he reached inside his tunic and tossed over my purse. Before I could stop myself, I foolishly put my hand to my neck to feel for the pouch I already knew was no longer there. I truly am a lackwit.
“Wait a minute,” Malchus said. “This one’s no good; the strap is cut.”
Betto said, “So it is! Lucky for us that one looks serviceable enough. Hang it here.” Betto waggled his blade just below One-eye’s chin. The pilferer removed his own bag and with infinite reluctance draped it over the sword. This time the look he gave the other cutpurse was genuinely lethal. “There’s a good lad,” Betto said. “But we’re not thieves, you know. We’ll just take what’s owed us.” With that he sheathed his sword, opened the thief’s purse and dumped its contents on the street. We melted back into the crowd; people began moving again, but continued to give the two men kneeling in the street a wide berth.
“Atriensis,” Malchus said as we moved off, “with respect, never walk down a street like this without first tucking your valuables down the front of your tunic.”
“If I were him,” Valens said, “I wouldn’t walk down these streets at all, not without a few good men to guard him.”
Betto shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You mean like us?”
“Leave him be, Flavius,” Malchus said. “You were behind Alexander, too, and I didn’t see you stop them.”
“Thank you all, gentlemen,” I said, ending the conversation. I took both pouches, one full, one empty, and did as the big legionary advised, first tucking one inside the other. There were no other incidents on the street, and not long thereafter we came upon a door above which hung an oversized, iron strigil. We filed inside, but just before the door closed behind me, I thought I heard distant shouts rising above the general noise of the city.
This was no typical bathing establishment. In every balnea I had ever frequented, women’s and men’s facilities had always been separate. I am convinced this was more a function of prejudice than prudery: Roman men did not want their conversation or relaxation vexed by the intrusive and inconsequential interruptions of females. In this egalitarian establishment, however, it appeared that female presumptuousness was of a kind more easily welcomed by the ruling sex.
We stood in a small anteroom that led through another open doorway to the larger changing area. From somewhere beyond came music from a lyre and pipes. Also, sounds of laughter and play, from both sexes, could be heard not far off. “If Cato the Elder were not already in his grave these hundred years,” Betto said, “this would put him in it.”
“Why’s that?” Valens asked.
“Because he was such an insufferable prig he wouldn’t even allow his son into his own presence when he bathed.”
“It’s a miracle he ever had a son,” Valens said.
“Well spoken,” Betto allowed.
A bald old man, whose weathered face and arms perfectly matched the namesake of the street in which he worked, sat behind a small table. Behind him, a bored looking guard leaned against the red-painted wall. The baths manager looked up and scanned the four of us, his gaze finally coming to rest disconcertingly on me. He narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin, considering. Could this look of disapproval be directed at me? I looked behind me, but there was no one else there. “Hmphh,” he said at last. “Four of you. That’ll be four sesterces.”
“What?” Betto objected, too loudly, as usual. “I’ve never paid more than a quarter of an as.” The guard pushed himself off the wall, no longer bored.
“That will be fine,” I said, placing the equivalent, a single silver denarius on the table.
“The baths of Numa are worth every as,” said the ancient balneator, who I believe meant to wink at us but was struck by a fit of coughing. When he recovered, he tapped the coin with an age-lined nail and said, “You’d better have brought more than this, though, unless all you want to do is bathe.”
“Actually,” I said, leaning over the table and lowering my voice, “I’m trying to locate a particular individual.”
Looking as if all his suspicions had just been confirmed, the balneator scooped the coin off the table and put it in his box. He scratched the stubble underneath his chin and said, “There’s no one here.”
“Really? No one?” said Betto. I held up my hand to keep his lips from raining further alienation down upon us.
The old man said, “No one with four big men looking for him.” He squinted at Betto. “Three, anyways.”
I reached into my purse and tossed an aureus on the table; we all listened to the lovely, dull clunk of its contact with the wood. It lay there silently, but each of us understood its secret language: “Look at me,” it sighed, “isn’t gold the most enchanting and wondrous of all colors?”
“First one of them I’ve seen all week,” said the balneator, leaving the coin where it had come to rest, but eyeing it greedily. “He’ll get lonely, he will.” I placed a second precisely on top of the first. Apparently, a bargain had been struck. The old man looked up with the gentle, querying interest of a librarian, and at the same time, without taking his eyes off mine, deftly swept the gold from the table and into his tunic, neatly circumventing the receipts box.