When I heard the ear-piercing scream tonight, I figured someone in the Fourth was having a nightmare of the impending-danger variety. Then I realized the shrieks weren’t coming from the barracks but from inside the bathhouse.

For our safety, nobody is supposed to be in the baths after eleven, because there are no lifeguards on duty. Janice says the real reason the doors are locked is to thwart romantically inclined legionnaires from getting up to shenanigans in there. That thwarting can be thwarted, though, if you know about the secret entrance to the main pool. Which everybody does, although not many people use it, because you have to swim underwater through a narrow concrete pipe, then squeeze through a small mesh gate that leads into the pool. You’d better hope you’re an underwater-breathing descendent of Neptune if you get stuck in there.

Apparently, a girl and a boy from the First Cohort thought the risk was worth it, because they sneaked in via the not-so-secret entrance tonight. I’m thinking their lovey-dovey mood evaporated when they surfaced, though.

Because dead rats.

Hundreds of them. Floating in the pool. Blocking the hot-springs water supply. Clogging the drains. Even hanging from the basket for used towels. I can’t imagine anything more totally, completely, scream-inducingly disgusting.

And mysterious, too, because no one can explain how so many rats got in there so quickly. The filtration system is shut off when the baths close, so they weren’t pumped in with the water. And the lifeguard swears the place was clean when he locked up at eleven. The couple sneaked in around eleven fifteen. Could someone have broken in and distributed all those rats in just fifteen minutes? Didn’t seem likely.

We were all scratching our heads when it came out that the lifeguard, a member of the Third, had a crush on the girl. The couple accused him of planting the rats to disrupt their date. The lifeguard denied it. The First rallied behind the young lovers and started blaming the lifeguard. The Third jumped in and flung those accusations right back at the couple, and then at the whole First Cohort. The First retaliated with venom. (The verbal kind, not actual venom. At least…I don’t think so.)

Things were escalating out of control when Frank and Reyna showed up. They listened to both sides, deliberated for a few minutes, and then ordered the First and the Third to clean up the mess together.

I like thinking about legionnaires from the First picking up dead rats, because so many of them are…hmm, what’s the best way to describe members of that cohort? Oh yes. Obnoxious jerks who think they’re all that and a bag of chips.

I feel bad for the lifeguard, though. The only thing he’s guilty of is liking someone who didn’t like him back. Hope that never happens to me.

It was a beautiful sunshine-filled morning, right up until it started raining poop. Not on me, thank gods, because ick.

I feel for the Second, though. They were on shovel-and-bag duty at the stables. But the compostable sacks must have been defective. Every time the giant eagles went airborne with their loads, the plastic ripped open and…well, it wasn’t a good time for those caught underneath, that’s for sure. Or for anybody caught next to them afterward. Not even a spritz of Bombilo’s Café Scent could have cut through that stink.

On a more positive note, the praetors have canceled this afternoon’s marching practice while they look into the faulty-bag issue. Which frees up my schedule to invenient MV!

Later…

No luck locating MV yet. But thanks to a visit to New Rome University’s library during my free time this afternoon, I know a ton more about Mamurius Veturius.

The library rivals some of the temples for architectural fabulousness. Sunlight streams into the main reading room through the oculus, the round skylight in the center of the gilded dome ceiling. Colorful tile mosaics of deities, famous Romans, and mythical creatures decorate the walls. One candlelit hallway is paved with stones engraved with the names of lost heroes. Some of those stones look worn and ancient, but others are brand-new. Heroes who died in last summer’s conflicts, I think.

Here’s hoping no new stones are added for a long, long time.

The library’s shelves are chock-full of scrolls and books. I’d probably still be searching the biography section except the exact volume I needed, Who Made What When and For Whom and Why: Ancient Roman Craftsmen, literally fell into my hands. I swear I saw a dark-haired woman peeking at me through the empty space where the slim book had been. But when I blinked and looked again, she was gone.

I took the book to a cozy window seat and flipped through the pages, looking for an entry for Mamurius Veturius. It was so brief, I almost missed it. Here’s what I found out:

Mamurius Veturius was master craftsman to King Numa, the ruler who took over the throne after Romulus, Rome’s founder, died. Numa was one of the good guys, famous for building temples (including one honoring Janus, Janice’s dad), writing books of laws, and keeping peace in the kingdom for forty-three years. (Not too shabby!) The gods apparently approved of Numa, because at some point during his reign, they sent him an ornate cello-shaped shield called an ancile, along with this promise: So long as this ancile is safe, Rome will endure.

Meaning, I guess, that if the ancile goes missing, Rome will go kaboom.

That’s where Mamurius Veturius came in. King Numa instructed his craftsman to make eleven identical copies of the ancile. That way, if someone tried to steal the ancile in order to destroy Rome, he’d have no clue which was the real one. The duplicates were so good that only Mamurius himself knew which one the original was. But just to be extra safe, King Numa stashed the twelve ancilia in a temple only a crazy person would dare to defile: the Temple of Mars Ultor.

I’ve been in Mars’s temple—or the modern-day replica, anyway. I saw a bunch of one-of-a-kind weapons in there…and an M made of eleven identical cello-shaped shields.

Eleven. Not twelve. Not…XII.

I’m thinking those eleven are Mamurius’s duplicates and that the original is hidden somewhere else in camp. Because it must be here. Otherwise Camp Jupiter, the living, breathing testament to Rome’s endurance, wouldn’t exist. Right?

I searched other books for info about Mamurius, Numa, and the ancile. I mean, the more you know, right? But I came up empty, which makes me think that the legend is really obscure—well, compared to the world-famous myths about the Olympians and celebrity heroes, anyway. That doesn’t make it any less real, though. Just a lot less known.

So the question is, if the original ancile exists, why isn’t it in Mars’s temple with the others? Or maybe it is. Maybe it just wasn’t part of the M, and it’s hanging on a different wall or locked away in a secret compartment or something. Only one way to find out—pay another visit to my favorite god-crypt!

But not until tomorrow. Because tonight I’m going to my first gladiator exhibition! Janice scored us seats in the Colosseum’s Blood Splash Zone. Scored me a cushion, too, because apparently those seats are hard as, well, the concrete they’re made of.

The star of the show is the murmillo champion, a swarthy bit of beefcake named Ricardo. If the posters plastered around camp are accurate, he sword-fights wearing a teeny-tiny loincloth…and not much else. I’m praying murmillo is Latin for he who wears undergarments beneath his loincloth. Because if he falls down…