Free Enemies of the Empire by Rosemary Rowe Page B

it’s no use you pretending otherwise.’
    ‘Promptillius has gone to Marcus?’ I was bewildered now.
    ‘He’s gone to join his master! This Libertus fellow. You heard what I said. Don’t look at me like that. I saw the note. The slave was to come here and tell us that there’d been a change of plan: Libertus the pavement-maker was to dine with his patron after all, and attend the assizes in the morning as a spectator. He wanted his slave to take fresh clothes and go to him at once, so that he could bathe and change and make ready for the feast. Now, I don’t know what you’re playing at, my friend, but it won’t work with me. Some trick of those young scoundrels, I suppose. One of their stupid wagers, was it, that you could get inside the mansio? You should have more sense, at your age. Well, it didn’t work. I’m not as stupid as they take me for. So, are you going to move along, or shall I lock you up, for trying to impersonate a citizen?’
    He had his sword-blade to my throat by now. I moved along.
    His threat was not an idle one. Impersonating a citizen can, at worst, mean death – although it did occur to me, as I slunk off into the shadows, that since I really was a citizen, the charge would be difficult to prove. In fact – although it would mean a beating, chains and an uncomfortable bed of stinking straw – at least inside the military cells I would be safe. I would have a roof above my head and be protected from the other harassments, half-glimpsed and wholly unexplained, which had dogged me ever since I got to town. In the morning I would be brought before the optio, who would quickly have me freed – and what would happen to the pompous sentry then! I almost considered going back and defying him to carry out his threat, but I had thought of another, less drastic solution to my plight – one which did not involve a thrashing!
    There is one place, at least, where a man can find a bed, behind a curtain and in privacy, at almost any time of night without too many questions being asked. Of course, there were the other occupants to think about – the girls with interesting specialities – but such females are paid to please their clients. I reasoned that if a customer required them to simply let him sleep while they kept watch, presumably they could be persuaded to do so, at a price.
    I would not go to Lyra’s brothel, naturally. I was certain that she’d set Paulinus onto me, and probably my unseen follower as well, and in any case I remembered what Aurissimus Big-ears had said about the dangers to one’s purse in her establishment. However, the owner of the thermopolium had spoken of that other wolf-house with the girls upstairs, whose doors were always open day and night. The premises were not far from his own and the area was not controlled by Lyra and her friends. If I could find my way there, that seemed the safest place.
    Even so, the plan involved some risk. It was getting very late by now, and I would have to retrace my steps back to the bath-house sector of the town where I had been followed so disturbingly before. My sole directions were from the hot-soup stall, so my only course was to go back and find the place from there – though Lupus’s thermopolium itself would be long shut by now. Such establishments stay open only as long as there are customers or until the stock of soup runs out.
    Going back again through those deserted streets was not an inviting prospect, but I could not stay where I was, and by now it was threatening to rain. The first drops were already bouncing off the paving stones. I thought wildly of finding shelter underneath an arch, but that was less inviting still: such places are often frequented by vagabonds and thieves and – since murder is the safest form of robbery, as it leaves no witnesses to bring a case – I knew that if I attempted such a thing I would be lucky to survive the night. If I’d had the slightest notion of where my patron was feasting, I