“Now I’ll go,” Claudia said. “Be careful, Tullia. And do guard your tongue.” Outside she readjusted her scarf and pulled her cloak more closely about her. Then she stepped into the cobble-stoned way and walked rapidly along it.
Tullia, peeping through the slit in the doorway, saw the Prefect’s man emerge from the shadows of a shop entrance and move off quickly to follow her. When the two had disappeared around the turn, Tullia closed the doors and hurriedly recrossed the atrium. A moment later she slipped out through the servants’ entrance. A freshly starched napkin covered the food in the basket she carried.
8
An unexpected assignment, fortunately, had delayed Longinus’ departure from Castra Praetoria, and he had just reached home when Tullia arrived at Senator Piso’s. Quickly she told him of the Prefect’s visit to her mistress.
He listened attentively, outwardly calm but inwardly with rage mounting as her story progressed. “Go back to your mistress, Tullia,” he said, when she finished, “and tell her that with me, too, nothing is changed. But warn her to make no attempt, until I tell her, to communicate with me. The Prefect is diabolically clever; he may suspect that we will try to thwart his plans. I don’t understand just what he’s scheming; we must be careful. But assure her that I will find some way of getting a message to her.”
“Centurion Longinus, if I may suggest, sir, should you send the message, or bear it yourself, to the shop of Stephanos in the Vicus Margaritarius....”
“I know that shop, Tullia, and the goldsmith, too.”
“Then, sir, from there I could take your message verbally to my mistress. Stephanos is the son of my father’s brother. He can be trusted, you may be assured, sir.”
“That’s a good arrangement, Tullia. And should your mistress wish to send me a message, you can leave it with the goldsmith. But do warn her to be careful. The Prefect may be setting a trap for us.”
The goldsmith Stephanos was, like his cousin Tullia, a Greek-speaking Jew who had been reared in the Jewish colony in Rome. Although a young man, he had already established a profitable business in the capital, and his customers numbered many of the equestrian class, including members of Senator Piso’s family. Consequently, Longinus, were he being watched, could go to the goldsmith’s shop without arousing suspicion.