something that had reached his ears but hadn’t initially registered. Frowning, he tapped Galronus on the elbow.
“Go to Balbus’ place. I’ll see you there soon as I can.”
The Remi noble nodded and rode on toward the Forum Boarium at a steady pace, allowing the city’s populace time and room to get out of the way. Watching him go for a moment, Fronto slid from the saddle, hooked the reins over his forearm, and strode over to the stall of the merchant whose cries had caught his attention. Peering up and down the trinkets on display, his eyes fell on exactly what he’d hoped to find. Picking it up, he examined it a little closer and, satisfied, held it up to the stallholder.
“How much?”
“To a soldier? Ten denarii, to help you save the Republic, eh?”
Without taking his eyes from his new acquisition, Fronto fished in his purse and passed the coins across. The trader blinked in surprise at some mug paying the extremely inflated asking price without haggling down at least a third of the way. Avarice lending speed to his hands, he quickly stashed away the coins and attended to someone else before this visiting officer decided he’d been cheated.
Fronto turned away from the stall and smiled with the first hint of real satisfaction in days. Reaching up, he undid the leather thong hanging around his neck and slid the strange bow-legged Gaulish woman from it. For a long moment, he stared at the amulet in distaste, wondering just how different the season might have been if he hadn’t insulted his patron Goddess with the horrible little image.
Teeth bared, he turned and flung the offending article out across the crowd and into the Tiber, where it disappeared from sight and the world of men. With a deep breath of relief, he slid the new, well-crafted bronze figurine of Fortuna onto the thong and retied it around his neck.
With a sudden flash of inspiration, he returned to the stall.
“Do you have Nemesis, too?”
The trader, his greed propelling him back to his new gullible best customer, nodded and reached down to the table, collecting a small ivory image of a winged Goddess with a sword in her hand.
“Just the one. Elephant ivory and good work. Very rare.” The trader narrowed his eyes. “Not cheap.”
Reaching into his purse, Fronto withdrew a gold aureus and dropped it onto the table. The stallholder almost frothed at the mouth. “I don’t have much change” he hazarded.
“Keep what you think’s fair and donate the rest to the shrine of the Goddess next time you’re passing. I’m not paying
As the trader almost pounced on the coin, Fronto added the new amulet to the cord round his neck, a grim smile crossing his face.
Gripping the reins, he hauled himself back up into the saddle and trotted off in the direction of the still- ruinous, part-repaired house of his ancestors
Chapter 22
(Rome: The Aventine Hill)
The townhouse of the noble Falerii stood heartbreakingly incomplete. It saddened Fronto to see the house in which he’d spent so much of his youth in such a condition, although it was a considerable improvement on the last time he’d seen it. Gone were the protruding charred timbers and the smoke blackened walls around the windows. New doors protected it from the street and the roof of one side was already covered with newly-fired red tiles. The other side was covered with temporary protective sheeting, while the side gate into the yard stood open, revealing a scene that looked more like a workmen’s store than the place where his father had taught him the rudiments of swordplay.
The house was quiet; no work going on. Likely they had finished for the day, and the partially used stacks of bricks in the yard suggested they’d downed tools and left recently. For a moment, Fronto reached for the handle of the front door, his hand going to the purse at his belt, before he realised the locks had been changed and his key would be useless. Presumably the workmen kept the keys during rebuilding, as well as the keys to the locked store where all the furnishings, decorations and other goods of the house were contained until the work was complete.
Frowning for a moment, not happy with the thought of having to break down his own door, a thought struck him and he made his way into the yard, tethering his horse to the gate and sidling between stacks of bricks and tiles, saw-benches and sacks of lime and of sand brought from Puteoli; bagged mere miles from the family’s estate. The side door of the house stood as he remembered, though slightly charred and as yet unreplaced.
Some small irritated part of his soul complained silently about the slow progress of the workmen, but Faleria had been insistent on choosing the men who had the best reputation for completed work rather than the fastest.
Hurrying across the yard, he was grateful to find the small plant pot with the Ceres decoration, upending it and retrieving the key to the yard door. Taking a deep breath, unsure as to what to expect from the house’s interior, he scurried across and opened the door with a click, swinging it inwards. The corridor running off left and right seemed to be in a completely charred and ruinous state. Work had not yet reached this part of the house and the floor was covered with cement-stained boards, empty sacks and small piles of materials.
Resisting the urge to see what had become of the garden, he turned left. The atrium would be the first port of call for cash-gathering; then his mother’s room, and finally the oecus. Mother was old-fashioned and didn’t like even secretly buried money to be anywhere near the slave quarters.
Shaking his head at the stained walls and ruined frescos, the cracked and broken marble floor and the general smell of cement and damp, he moved through to the atrium. The monochrome floor mosaic of a hunting scene was a uniform grey of cement dust, though it seemed to have suffered no damage. At last, as Fronto glanced towards the front door, he realised he’d reached the current point of work, and he had to admit that the refurbishment of the hall to the front door and the walls of the atrium had put them in probably better condition than he’d ever seen them. New paint was being applied to one of the walls, a sheet hung over it to prevent the dust in the air from damaging it.
A chisel and hammer and a pile of white marble sat in a corner, where a craftsman was busy re-skirting the wall’s base with loving care.
It almost seemed a shame that he was about to start creating extra work for them.
Picking up the hammer and chisel, he moved across the mosaic to where an African man had speared a great cat and bore a look of amazement that had amused Fronto when he was a child. Carefully placing the chisel so as to damage the fewest tesserae possible, he tapped the top and began to deface the mosaic. The other two caches were sensibly buried beneath a single flag, but he remembered father being adamant that he wanted a hunting mosaic in the atrium because the fat and wealthy Scaurus had one. Mother had been unwilling to admit to having funds buried of which he was unaware and had watched with a straight face as the beautiful mosaic was laid over her first storage pot.
Tap. Scrape. Tap. Scrape.
A strange noise stopped him for a moment and he paused, the chisel held above the maimed African. Silence. After a moment he decided it was the sound of cats in the street outside somewhere. They were a menace in the neighbourhood.
Tap. Scrape…
There it was again. It wasn’t cats. Definitely not cats; and it appeared to be coming from inside the building.
Suddenly alarmed, Fronto gently lowered the hammer and chisel to the floor and rose from his crouch, glancing at the kit bag that he’d dropped nearby. Crossing lightly on the balls of his feet, he bent down and withdrew his gladius from the bag, unsheathing it with a quiet hiss and dropping the scabbard back to the floor. Feeling a little more secure, he began to pad quietly into the corridor opposite the one from which he’d entered,
