‘Like you?’
I laughed. ‘Not me. I have no manners, and no money, either. All I own are a woman and a cat and a house I can’t afford to keep up. I was thinking of Cicero.’
‘From the way you describe him, he is a very homely man.’
‘Yes, Bethesda, Cicero has nothing that would interest you.’
‘But the boy …’
‘No, Bethesda, Rufus Messalla is too young even for your tastes, and far too rich.’
‘I meant the slave boy. The one who fetched you for his master. The one you saw with the girl. How did he look with his clothes off?’
I shrugged. ‘I hardly saw him. Or at least not the parts of him that would interest you.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know the parts that would interest me.’
‘Perhaps not.’ With my eyes shut I saw them again, crushed against the wall, moving furiously together, shuddering to a rhythm from which all the rest of the world was excluded. Bethesda slid her hand inside my tunic and softly stroked my chest.
‘What happened afterwards? Don’t tell me they were caught, or I shall be very sad.’
‘No, they weren’t caught.’
‘Did you let the boy know you had seen him?’
‘No. I made my way down the corridor until I found Cicero and Rufus in the garden, sitting with Caecilia Metella, all three of them looking very grim. We spoke for a few moments. Tiro walked in a bit later, looking appropriately embarrassed. Cicero made no comment. No one suspected a thing.’
‘Of course not. They think they know so much and he must know so little, being only a slave. You’d be surprised at the things a slave can do without getting caught.’
A tress of her hair fell against my cheek. I rubbed my face against it, breathing in the scents of henna and herbs. ‘Would I be surprised, Bethesda?’
‘No. Not you. Nothing surprises you.’
‘Because I have a suspicious nature. Thank the gods for that.’ Bast purred loudly against my feet. I settled my shoulders against Bethesda’s thigh.
‘So tired,’ she said softly. ‘Do you want me to sing?’
‘Yes, Bethesda, sing something quiet and soothing. Sing something in a language I don’t understand.’
Her voice was like still water, pure and deep. I had never heard the song before, and though I couldn’t understand a word of it, I knew it must have been a lullaby. Perhaps it was a song her mother had sung. I lay half-dreaming in her lap, while images of the most horrendous violence passed harmlessly before my eyes. The images were unnaturally vivid, yet somehow remote, as if I watched them through a thick pane of coloured glass. I saw the drunken gladiators and the embalmers and the stabbing in the street that morning and Tiro’s face flushed with excitement. I saw an old man set upon by thugs in an alley somewhere, stabbed over and over. I saw a naked man bound and whipped, pelted with excrement, sewn up in a bag with animals and cast alive into the Tiber.
At some point the lullaby ceased and changed into another song, a song I had often heard before, though I had never understood the words. It was one of the songs Bethesda sang to excite me, and while she sang it I sensed the movements of her body as she pulled off her robe, and I smelled the strong musk of her naked flesh. She rose up and over and beside me, until we lay close together upon the couch. She pulled my tunic above my hips, just as the daughter of Sextus Roscius had done for Tiro. I never opened my eyes, even as she bent down and swallowed me, even as I pulled her up and rolled atop her and pushed myself inside her. It was Bethesda’s body I embraced, but it was the girl I saw behind my closed eyes, standing naked and defiled with the seed of a slave glistening on her flesh.
We lay together for a long time, unmoving, our bodies joined by heat and sweat, as if flesh could melt and fuse. Bast, who at some point had fled, returned and lay purring amid the tangle of our legs. I heard a peal of thunder and thought I only dreamed it, until a scattering of warm raindrops fell against my flesh, blown in from the garden. The torch sputtered and failed. More thunder, and Bethesda huddled against me, murmuring in her secret language. The rain fell thick and straight, hissing on the roof tiles and paving stones, a long, steady rain, powerful enough to wash the foulest sewers and streets of Rome, the cleansing rain that poets and priests tell us comes from the gods to purify the sins of fathers and sons alike.
IX
The next morning I rose early and washed myself from the fountain in the garden. The parched earth had grown plump and moist from the night-long rain. The vegetation dripped with heavy dew. The sky above was milky pearl touched with coral, as opalescent as the inner surface of a shell. As I watched, the glaze of colour evaporated into mist; by imperceptible degrees the sky became a proper blue, suffused with light, cloudless, harbinger of the heat to come. I dressed in my lightest tunic and cleanest toga and ate a mouthful of bread. I left Bethesda sleeping on the couch. She lay clutching her robe as a coverlet against the still-cool morning, with Bast curled against her neck like a collar of black fur.
I made my way at a quick stride to Cicero’s house. We had parted the day before with the understanding that I would pass by on my way to inspect the site of Sextus Roscius’s murder. But when I arrived Cicero sent word by Tiro that he would not rise until noon. He suffered from a chronic malady of the bowels, and blamed the present relapse on having broken his regimen to eat a prune at Caecilia Metella’s. He kindly offered the use of Tiro for the day.
The streets still gleamed with rain and the air had a clean, scrubbed smell when we set out. By the time we reached the foot of the Capitoline, passed through the Fontinal Gate, and entered the neighbourhood of the Circus Flaminius, the heat of the day had already begun to reassert its power over the city. The paving stones began to steam. Brick walls began to ooze and sweat. The freshness of morning turned humid and stifling.
I mopped my forehead with the edge of my toga and silently cursed the heat. I glanced at Tiro and saw that he was smiling, staring straight ahead with a stupid look in his eyes. I could imagine the reason for his high spirits, but I said nothing.
All about the Circus Flaminius is a network of mazelike streets. Those nearest the Circus, especially those that face the long structure itself and are thus most able to exploit the heavy traffic that surrounds it, are thick with shops, taverns, brothels, and inns. The outlying web of streets is crammed with tenements three and four storeys tall, many of which overhang the street and thus block out the sunlight. One street looks very much like another, and all are a hodgepodge of every age and quality of architecture. Given the frequency of fires and earthquakes, Rome is constantly being rebuilt; as the population has grown and vast tracts of property have been amassed under the control of great landlords, the newer buildings tend to be of the poorest imaginable design and construction. Surrounding a venerable brick-and-mortar apartment building that has somehow withstood a century of catastrophes, one may see ramshackle tenements without the slightest ornament, looking to be made of nothing more than mud and sticks. Under Sulla, of course, these problems have only become worse.
We followed the route that Sextus Roscius had described, as copied down the day before by the young Messalla. Rufus’s script was atrocious, almost unreadable. I remarked to Tiro that it was a pity he had been busy elsewhere and unable to take down the notes in his own firm, clean hand. ‘Being a noble, Rufus has never bothered to learn how to make his letters, at least not so well that anyone else could read it. But you seem to have considerable skill in wielding your stylus.’ I made the comment as offhandedly as I could, and smiled to see his ears turn red.
I had no doubt that the route was correct; it followed a natural path from the house of Caecilia Metella into the heart of the Circus district, taking the broadest streets, avoiding the more narrow and most dangerous shortcuts. We passed by several taverns, but old Sextus would not have stopped there, at least not on that night, not if he was so eager to reach the sender of the cryptic message.
We came into a broad sunlit square. S
hops faced inward towards the central cistern where the locals came to draw their daily water. A tall, broad-shouldered woman in dingy robes seemed to be the self-appointed mistress of the cistern, regulating the small line of slaves and housewives who stood about gossiping while they waited their turn. One of the slaves threw half a bucket of water on a group of ragged urchins loitering nearby. The children screamed with pleasure and shook themselves like dogs.
‘Through there,’ Tiro said. He studied the directions and bunched his eyebrows. ‘At least I think so.’
‘Yes, I remember from yesterday: a narrow passage between a wine shop and a tall red-stained tenement.’ I looked about the irregular square, at the six streets that radiated outward. Of them all, the street that old Sextus had taken that night was the narrowest, and because it took a sharp turn early on, it afforded the least visibility. Perhaps it was the shortest way to the woman called Elena. Perhaps it was the only way.
I looked about and spotted a man crossing the square. I took him to be a minor merchant or a shopkeeper, a man of some means but not rich, to judge from his worn but well-made shoes. From the easy way he comported himself, looking idly about the square without seeming to notice a thing, I assumed he was a local who had crossed it many times, perhaps every day. He paused beside the public sundial mounted on a low pedestal, furrowing his brow and wrinkling his nose at it. I stepped up to him.
‘ “May the gods confound him,” ’ I quoted, ‘ “who first invented the hours, and who placed the first sundial in Rome!” ’
‘Ah!’ He looked up, smiling broadly, and instantly picked up the refrain: ‘ “Pity me, pity me! They have segmented my day like the teeth of a comb!” ’
‘Ah, you know the play,’ I began, but he was not to be interrupted.
‘ “When I was a boy my stomach was my clock, and it never steered me wrong; now even if the table overflows there’s no eating till shadows are long. Rome is ruled by the sundial; Romans starve and thirst all the while!” ’
We shared a quiet laugh. ‘Citizen,’ I said, ‘do you know this neighbourhood?’
‘Of course. I’ve lived here for years.’
‘Then I’m sure you can help me. Starving and thirsty I’m not, but there is another craving I long to satisfy. I’m a lover of birds.’
‘Birds? None around here but the pigeons. Too stringy for my taste.’ He smiled, showing a wide gap between his teeth.
‘I was thinking of a more elegant fowl. At home in water, on the earth, or heaven-bound. A friend of a friend told me there were swans hereabout.’
He understood at once. ‘The House of Swans, you mean.’
I nodded.
‘Right down that street.’ He pointed to the space between the wine shop and the red tenement.
‘Might one of these other streets take me there as easily?’
‘Not unless you want to walk twice as far as you need to. No, this street is the only practical way. It’s a single long block with only a few dead-end streets branching off. And the walk will be worth your while,’ he added with a wink.
‘I certainly hope so. Come, Tiro.’ We turned and walked towards the narrow street. I could see only a little way down its length. The buildings on either side were high. Even in the bright morning light its walls seemed to close around us, dank and musty, a dim crevice of mortar and brick.
The buildings along its length were mostly long tenements, many with only a single door and no windows at street level, so that we walked for long stretches with blank walls on either side. Upper storeys overhung the lower; they would provide shelter when it rained, but they would also create deep pockets of shadow at night. All along the way, every fifty paces or so, brackets were mounted in the walls, filled with the still-smouldering stumps of last night’s torches. Under each torch a small stone was set into the wall; each stone was engraved with the profile of a swan, the crude sort of work done by cheap artisans. The tiles were advertisements. The torches were there to guide the nighttime clientele to the House of Swans.
‘It should be soon,’ Tiro said, looking up from the tablet.
‘We’ve passed a side street to our left already, and now another to our right. According to Rufus’s directions, Sextus Roscius found a large bloodstain in the middle of the street. But you don’t think it could still be there, after all this time—’
Tiro’s words never quite became a question. Instead his voice dropped on the final word as he looked down between his feet and came to a sudden stop. ‘Here,’ he whispered, and swallowed loudly.
Consider that a man’s body contains a great deal of blood. Consider also the porous nature of paving stones, and the barely adequate drainage of many Roman streets, particularly those at the lower elevations. Consider that we had received a very light rainfall that winter. Even so, old Sextus Roscius must have lain for a very long time in the centre of the street, bleeding and bleeding, to have left such a large, indelible stain.
The stain was almost perfectly round and as far across as a tall man’s arm. Towards the edges it became blurred and faded, blending imperceptibly with the general grime. But nearer the centre it was still quite concentrated, a very dark, blackened red. The day-to-day stamp of passing feet had worn the surface of the stones to their normal, oily smoothness, but when I knelt down to look more closely I could still detect tiny, desiccated crusts of red in the deeper fissures.
I looked up. Even from the centre of the street it was impossible to see into any of the second-storey windows except at a severely oblique angle. To see from the windows onto the street one would have to lean far over the sill.
The nearest door was several feet farther up the street; this was the entrance to the long tenement on our left. The wall on our right was equally featureless, except for a food shop a little way behind us, at the corner where the street intersected with a narrow cul-de-sac. The shop was not yet open. A single square door, very tall and broad, covered the entire front. It was a wooden door, coloured with a pale yellow wash and marked along the top with various glyphs for grains, vegetables, and spices. Much lower down, in one corner, there was another marking on the door that made me suck in my breath when I saw it.
‘Tiro! Here, come see this.’ I hurried back and squatted down beside the door. From the level of a man’s waist and below, the wood was covered with a film of soot and dust that thickened into a grimy band as it neared the street. Even so, at knee level, the handprint beneath the dirt was still quite clear to see. I placed my hand atop it and felt a strange shudder, knowing without a doubt that I was touching a bloody handprint left months before by Sextus Roscius.
Tiro looked at the handprint and back to the stain in the street. ‘They’re so far apart,’ he whispered.
‘Yes. But the handprint must have been made first.’ I stood and walked past the door to the corner. The narrow little branch street was not a street at all, or if it ever had been, was now bricked in at the end with a solid two-storey wall. The space itself was perhaps twenty feet deep, and no more than five feet wide. At the far end someone had been burning refuse; bits of rubbish and bone peeked out of a waist-high pile of grey and white ash. No windows overlooked the space, either from the surrounding walls or from the tenement across the street. The nearest torches were mounted at least forty steps away. At night the little cul-de-sac would be utterly dark and unseen until one passed directly before it – the perfect place to lie in ambush.
‘This was where they waited, Tiro, on this very spot, hidden in this recess, knowing he would come this way to answer the note from the woman Elena. They must have known what he looked like, well enough to recognize him from the light of the torches carried by his slaves, because they did not hesitate at all to spring out and begin stabbing him, here at the corner.’
I walked slowly towards the handprint. ‘The first wound must have been somewhere in his chest or belly – I suppose they must have looked him in the face to be sure – because he had no trouble touching the wound, clutching it, smea
ring his whole hand with blood. Somehow he broke away. Perhaps he thought he could push this door open, but he must have fallen to his knees – you see how low the handprint is.’ I glanced up the street. ‘But the real slaughter took place there, in the middle of the street. Somehow he managed to scramble back to his feet and stagger that far before they overcame him.’
‘Perhaps the slaves were trying to fight off the assassins,’ Tiro said.
‘Perhaps.’ I nodded, though I could more easily imagine them bolting in a blind panic at the first glint of steel.
I bent down to examine the handprint again. The high, broad door gave a shudder and sprang outward, hitting me square in the nose.
‘Here, what’s that?’ came a voice from inside. ‘Another vagrant, sleeping in front of my shop? I’ll have you beaten. Get on, let me open the door!’
The door shuddered again. I blocked it with my foot until I could stand and step safely aside.
A gnarled face peered from behind the door. ‘I said, get on!’ the man growled. The door swung outward in a wide arc, vibrating on its hinges, until it slammed against the wall beyond the cul-de-sac, completely covering over the narrow walkway where the assassins had hidden.
‘Oh, not a vagrant,’ the old man muttered, looking me up and down. I was still rubbing my nose. ‘My apologies.’ His voice carried not the least hint of friendliness or regret.
‘This is your shop, sir?’
‘Of course it’s my shop. And has been since my father died, which was probably before you were born. His father’s before that.’ He squinted up at the sunlight, shook his head as if the brightness disgusted him, and shuffled back into the shop.
‘You’re only now opening the store?’ I said, following him. ‘It seems rather late.’
‘It’s my shop. I open when I’m ready.’
‘When he’s ready!’ A voice shrieked from somewhere beyond the counter at the back of the shop. The long room was steeped in shadow. After the burning light of the street I stared into the gloom like a blind man. ‘When he’s ready, he says! When I’m finally able to get him out of bed and dressed is when he’s ready. When I’m ready, he could say. One of these days I won’t bother to get out of bed, I’ll just lie about like he does, and then where will we be?’
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 10