Latin, ‘He gave me a counterfeit as in change.’
Magnus eased his grip. ‘Can you prove that?’
The man reached for his belt and pulled a small copper coin from a leather pocket sown into the reverse side. Magnus looked at it; the surface had been scratched revealing the dull-metallic hue of iron. He took the coin and brandished it at the baker. ‘Did you give him this, Vitus?’
The baker reddened and held up his hands. ‘Of course not, Magnus I wouldn’t be so stupid; I’m well aware of the punishment for passing dud coinage.’
‘I think that I had better have a look in your shop. Marius, ask this gentleman nicely to escort us to it.’
‘My pleasure, Magnus,’ Marius said stepping forward and placing a firm hand on the reluctant Vitus’ shoulder, slowly turning him around; he pushed his stump into the small of the baker’s back and propelled him forward the few paces to his open-front shop.
Sextus followed, hauling the thief after him.
‘Where do you keep your money, Vitus?’ Magnus asked, looking around the shelf-lined premises and enjoying the smell of freshly baked bread.
Vitus glanced sidelong at his accuser, still secure in Sextus’ grip. ‘There, under the oven.’ He pointed to a recess below a sturdy iron door. Next to it two elderly female slaves were kneading dough on a wooden table. They continued with their work, ignoring the intrusion.
‘Show me.’
Vitus retrieved a wooden box from behind a couple of full, small sacks and opened it; it was a quarter filled with low denomination coins.
‘That’s not where he got my change from,’ the thief exclaimed. ‘One of the slaves got it from a bag in a draw in the table.’
The two women stopped the work and looked at their master who paled.
Magnus smiled grimly at the baker and held out his hand. Vitus nodded at one of the women who opened a draw and pulled out a small leather bag and threw it to Magnus.
‘Well, well, Vitus,’ Magnus said as he tipped a dozen or so coins into his hand, ‘evidently you are stupid; lucky that it was me that caught you and not an aedile.’
Vitus fell to his knees and clutched at the hem of Magnus’ toga. ‘Please Magnus, don’t report me to the aedile; I’ll lose a hand. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.’
‘Too fucking right you won’t do it again; I won’t have it in my area, it will give us all a bad name.’ He turned to the thief. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tigran, master.’
‘Where’re you from?’
‘Armenia, master.’
‘No, I meant: where are you from in Rome?’
‘Oh, I live in the shanty town amongst the tombs on the Via Salaria.’
‘You’re not a citizen are you?’
‘No master. I arrived here a few months ago.’
‘Then I’ll give you a warning: you don’t steal here. Next time you’re cheated in my area come and see me, I won’t have people taking the law into their own hands. Explain that to him, Sextus.’
With a sharp jab, Sextus rammed his right fist into Tigran’s stomach, doubling him over with a loud exhalation of breath.
Magnus put the counterfeit coins back into their bag and tucked it into the fold of his toga. ‘Get me two loaves of bread, Vitus.’ As the baker rose to his feet and scuttled to a shelf Magnus removed four asses, the equivalent of one sesterce, from the money box and gave them to Tigran, who still struggled for breath. ‘Give him the bread as well, Vitus.’
Vitus quickly handed over the loaves.
‘Now get out of here and don’t come back unless you plan to behave honestly,’ Magnus said cuffing Tigran around the ear.
‘Thank you, Magnus.’ Tigran turned quickly to go, clutching the loaves to his chest with one hand and clasping his money in the other. He pushed through the crowd of onlookers and disappeared.
‘As for you,’ Magnus growled, pulling Vitus by the collar so that their faces were nose to nose, ‘I want a list of everyone that you can remember passing that shit on to, plus the name of the person who supplied it, with me by morning, or it will be your last, if you take my meaning?’ He brought his knee sharply up into Vitus’ testicles and then walked away leaving the baker to crumple to the floor, eyes bulging, unable to breathe and with both hands grasping his damaged genitals. The crowd parted for him voicing their approval having witnessed justice well done.
Magnus and Servius sat at a table in the shadowy, smoky confines of the small room behind the tavern that they used to conduct business. A jug of steaming hot, spiced and honeyed wine stood between them next to a single oil-lamp. ‘So we need to kill a Praetorian Tribune in a way that doesn’t look like an accident and doesn’t look like an obvious murder but is suspicious enough for Sejanus to recognise it as a warning from Antonia,’ Servius summarised.
Magnus looked gloomy. ‘That’s about it, Brother. How the fuck can we do that?’ He took a swig from the cup of that he held in both hands and scalded his tongue.
Servius looked on with amusement as his superior called on various gods to curse or strike down the obviously half-witted slave who had prepared the wine. ‘I think that was a good lesson,’ he observed once the tirade had subsided. ‘Drink the wine before it’s ready and it will hurt you; drink when it’s just right and it will please you. So let’s not rush into this…’
‘But we have to rush into this,’ Magnus interrupted — the burn had not helped his temper. ‘Antonia wants this done in the next couple days.’
Servius raised a calming hand. ‘Yes, and it shall be. All I’m saying is that at the moment we don’t know how to approach it. The difference between an accident, death in suspicious circumstances and murder is the situation in which the body is found. A man may die falling from a horse that he rides every day; he may genuinely have fallen off, in which case it is an accident; or the horse may have been spooked on purpose by someone in order to get it to throw the man off, in which case it’s murder. However, if a man is found dead having fallen from a horse but it’s known that he never goes riding, then that’s death in suspicious circumstances; it would be highly unlikely to be an accident because what is he doing on the horse in the first place? And yet you can’t prove that it’s not; nor can you prove that it was murder because people die all the time from falling off horses.’
Magnus’ face brightened; the pain from his burnt tongue forgotten. ‘Ah! So you’re saying that if we stage an “accident” whilst Blandinus is apparently doing something that he never normally does then Sejanus will suspect it was murder but be unable to prove it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So we need to use the rest of tonight and tomorrow to find out all that we can about the unfortunate tribune.’
‘Precisely, and then we will have to somehow lure or force the poor man into that unusual circumstance in which he will be found dead.’
‘Tricky but not impossible. Get the lads onto it immediately.’
‘I will Brother,’ Servius confirmed as a knock sounded on the door.
‘Yes?’ Magnus called.
Marius stuck his head into the room. ‘Magnus, they’re here waiting outside, them Albanians, and a strange fucking sight they are too.’
‘I don’t care what they look like, so long as they’ve got the boys.’
‘Yeah, they got them all right.’
‘Good. Go and tell Cassandros to bring the boy into the tavern, I’ll send for him when I need him.’ Magnus rose to his feet. ‘Shall we go and do business, Brother?’
‘I think we should,’ his counsellor agreed following him out.
Magnus surveyed the four bizarrely attired easterners waiting in the moonlight by the tables outside the tavern. Two pretty youths in their early teens, one with blond hair and one dark, stood next to them, staring at Magnus with frightened eyes, knives held to their throats.
