“Then what happened?”
The words caught in her throat and she took another sip of the wine before continuing. “I bought the jars and returned to the man’s house. When I got there . . . Oh, dear Hera! The man was locking the door behind him, and then he ran off. I could smell smoke.”
As she spoke, I realized I too could smell smoke wafting in from a distance. Apicius buried his head into my shoulder. “Dear gods, he locked them in . . .”
Sotas was as patient as ever. “Keep going, Passia.”
“I yelled at him but he ran away. I tried to open the door but I couldn’t. I could hear them screaming inside. Smoke was pouring out from under the door. I ran around to the side to see if I could get in a window but all the windows were boarded up.” Passia began her sobbing anew. “I couldn’t get to them! Oh, dear gods! The flames were so strong. I kept yelling but no one would help me!”
“There were no vigiles?” I asked.
“Not until the whole building and the one next door were both on fire. They could do nothing. Nothing! Oh, dear Hera, they didn’t have enough water to put anything out. Even when they used their hooks to pull down the buildings it did nothing but spread the fire. Oh, gods, Aelia! Fannia! They are gone.” She put her head in her hands and let the sobs wrack her body.
Thank the gods for Sotas that day. He was the calm in the middle of the tempest. He immediately sent guards out to determine who owned that building and to find out about the messenger who had delivered the message. But I knew. It could only have been Livia.
Then I saw Glycon hovering in the crowd of slaves standing along the edges of the atrium. Rage rose up inside my breast and my face reddened with the heat of my ire. “You!” I yelled and pointed. Apicius sat up to see who I was gesturing toward.
All eyes in the room swiveled in Glycon’s direction. “Yes, you! This is your fault!”
Glycon looked at me, gaping and startled. He gathered his robes around him and stepped backward a pace.
“What is? I don’t understand!”
“You told Aelia her marriage was at an end! You sent her to her death!”
“What do you mean?” Apicius choked, his eyes rimmed in red.
“Yes, what do you mean?” Glycon’s voice shook.
Passia pulled herself out of the chair and stormed toward him. She pushed a finger into the old man’s chest. “Aelia went to buy silphium to please Apicius—because she thought her marriage was ending.” Tears made tracks in the soot on her face. “You told her that her marriage was dead! This is your fault! You should have been the one in the fire!”
The front doors opened and one of the guards burst in. The smell of smoke entered with him, strong and ominous. “The Caelian Hill, Master Apicius! Much of it is on fire. They are sending vigiles from all the hills to try to contain it.”
Sotas thanked him and returned him to his post. When I looked back to Glycon, he was gone.
Apicius had also noticed. “Sotas, send guards to find the astrologer. If he is still in the house, they have my permission to kill him on sight.” Then he collapsed on the couch.
? ? ?
Apicius made us go to the Caelian Hill. We didn’t take the litter—with the fire the crowds were too thick and it would have been dangerous. Instead, flanked by a few guardsmen, Sotas, Passia, and I walked, and sometimes ran, with him, tears streaming down our faces. We couldn’t get close to the house where Passia indicated the tragedy had struck. We were stopped a block away from our school, which I could see was ablaze as well, flames licking the sides of the upper floor. I watched in horror, thanking the gods I had been in the habit of bringing my cookbook notes and knives home with me every night.
I felt mixed emotions. I had long since tired of teaching, but oh, how the school had changed my life. A part of me died when I saw the roof cave in and half the school burst into flames. Later I would sacrifice a white sow to Jupiter for sparing the slaves who had been living there, all twenty of them.
A row of soot-covered vigiles kept us from going farther up the hill. Sotas tried to steer us home but Apicius kept repeating, “Please, take me where I can see.” We led him to an outcropping on the Palatine that held a good view of the Caelian, barely visible through the darkness and thick smoke. Apicius fell to his knees, threw his arms over the low stone wall, and wept. Sotas, Passia, and I huddled and wrapped our arms around Apicius. The hurt that reverberated in my chest was echoed in those arms and limbs, in the tears that wet our skin, in the ashes that filled our hair.
It took two days for the fire to die down and it destroyed the lower half of the Caelian Hill. There was nothing left of the school but rubble. The head of Apicius’s guard was able to recover some ashes from the shop where Fannia and Aelia died and he brought them back in small terra-cotta jars wrapped in swaths of black cloth. I had my doubts about how they could be other than pieces of wood from the wreckage but said nothing. Apicius seemed comforted to have the jars even if we had to pry them from his hands after another long jag of tears.
A few hours after the ashes were recovered I took a walk with Sotas in the garden to the far end where we wouldn’t be overheard. Sotas’s voice was grave. “The vigiles reported that the shop was owned by one of Livia’s freedmen.”
“I knew it.” I threw my hands up to the sky. “Apollo! Let your arrows fly to that woman’s breast and make her pay for all the tears we have shed.”
“Homer,” Sotas recognized. “It’s apt.”
I wanted to weep in frustration. “We can’t tell anyone about this, can we?”
Sotas shook his head. “No. Even the vigiles told me they were not going to make a report. We can’t accuse Caesar’s mother.”
“She killed dozens.”
“I know. But if we make a fuss it will only end in more death. Likely our deaths.” He rested his hand reassuringly on my shoulder.
I kicked the nearby fence with my foot. “At the first banquet for Caesar, Livia told Fannia her time was running out. And that she and Apicius had insulted her for the last time.”
“Fannia was ever taking risks with her cousin. And Apicius crossed the line by not selling you and later by freeing you.”
I ran through all the scenarios in my mind—all the ways I could poison the witch. In her soup, in her drink, in a delicate sauce over her fish. Damn all her tasters!
“I know what you are thinking,” he warned me. “Revenge is not an answer. You have a woman and child to consider. Leave Livia’s fate to the gods. And don’t tell Apicius. He would do something stupid that could likely get us all killed. Nor Apicata—do not burden her further.”
I could say nothing. Sotas was right. I could no longer hold it all in and I broke down weeping. The big slave held me and comforted me like a brother.