‘What is it?’
‘The petition the Amerian town council presented to Sulla – to Chrysogonus, actually – protesting against the proscription of Sextus Roscius. This is the copy the council kept for itself. The original should be kept somewhere in the Forum, but these kinds of documents have a way of disappearing when they might embarrass someone, don’t they? But this is a valid copy; it bears all our names, even Capito’s. It’s doing no good sitting in my house. Maybe Cicero can use it.
‘Meanwhile I’ll lend you one of my horses. He won’t be able to match your white beauty for strength, but you’ll only be riding him half as hard. I have a cousin with a farm midway between here and Rome. You can stay with him tonight and ride into the city tomorrow. He owes me some favours, so don’t be afraid to eat your fill from his table. Or if you can’t wait to reach Rome, you can try to talk him into trading one of his horses for mine and then keep riding like a crazy man until you get to the city.’
I raised an eyebrow, then acquiesced with a nod. The stern look softened. Titus was very much a Roman father, used to giving lectures and imposing his will on everyone in his house. His duty to Vespa done, he smiled and mussed his son’s hair. ‘And now you’ll go wash your face and hands by the well and then join us for the meal. While city folk may have just risen, some of us have been up since cock’s crow working up an appetite.’
The whole family gathered in the shade of a massive fig tree to take their midday meal. Titus Megarus had another son besides Lucius, an infant boy, as well as three daughters, all with the same family name plus another to mark their order, in the traditional Roman style: Megara Majora, Megara Minora, Megara Tertia. Though I couldn’t quite discern who was a resident and who might only be visiting, joining the meal that day were also two brothers-in-law, one of them married with young children, two grandmothers, and one grandfather. The children ran about, the women sat on the grass, the men sat on chairs, and two slave women moved among us making sure that no one went hungry.
Titus’s wife leaned against the tree trunk, nursing the infant; her eldest daughter sat nearby and cooed a lullaby that seemed to follow the meandering tune of the stream that rippled nearby. One was never far from music in the home of Titus Megarus.
Titus introduced me to his father and brother-in-law, who already seemed to know something about my visit. Together they derided Capito and Magnus and their henchman Glaucia, then drew away from the topic with nods and pursed lips as if to let me know I could rely upon their discretion. Soon the conversation turned to crops and the weather, and Titus pulled his chair closer to mine.
‘If you were planning on another look at Capito and company before you leave, you may be disappointed.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I sent Lucius on an errand into town this morning, and on his way back he passed the three of them on the road. Magnus muttered something faintly insulting, so Lucius politely asked them where they were headed. Capito told him they were on their way to one of his new estates on the Tiber to do some hunting. Which means, of course, that they can’t possibly be back before sundown, if they come back today at all.’
‘Which leaves the house to Capito’s wife.’
‘Ah, there’s the gossip. While Lucius was in town he heard they’d had a terrible row yesterday and the old woman stormed out of the house after nightfall to go to stay with her daughter in Narnia. Meaning there’s no one in charge of the estate now except a grizzled old steward Capito inherited from Sextus Roscius. They say the man drinks wine all day and hates his new master. I only tell you this in case you had any unfinished business at Capito’s house. The master and his wife and friends all being gone, I suppose that might be an inconvenience to you. Or perhaps not.’
He turned back to the general conversation wearing the subtle smile of a conspirator quite pleased with himself.
In fact, I left Titus Megarus with no intention of stopping again at Capito’s house. I had already learned what I needed in coming to Ameria; I even carried in my pouch a copy of the petition Titus and his fellow citizens had submitted to Chrysogonus to protest against the proscription of Sextus Roscius. I hardly bothered to look back on the serenity of the Amerian valley as I left it. My thoughts as I guided my undistinguished mount up the hillside were all of Rome, of Bethesda and Cicero and Tiro; of the people on the street of the House of Swans. I frowned, remembering the widow Polia, then smiled, remembering the whore Electa; and I abruptly swung my mount around and headed back towards Capito’s house.
The slave Carus was not pleased to see me. He recognized me with a plaintive look, as if I were a demon come especially to torment him.
‘Why so glum?’ I said, stepping past him into the vestibule. The walls had been freshly coloured with a pink wash. The tiled floor, checkered black and white, was obscured by drifts of sawdust, and the whole room rang with the unnatural echoes of a house under renovation. ‘I should think this would be a holiday for you, with your master and mistress away.’
He screwed up his face as if he were about to tell a lie and then thought better of it. ‘What do you want?’
‘What used to go here?’ I asked, stepping closer to a niche containing a very bad copy of a Greek bust of Alexander. It was absurdly pretentious, certainly not the sort of thing the countrified young Sextus Roscius would have kept in his house; more like something you’d find in the home of a highwayman who loots the villas of the tasteless rich.
‘A spray of flowers,’ Carus said, staring bleakly at the copy with its vapid expression and wild tendrils of hair, almost more a Medusa than an Alexander. ‘In the days before the change, my mistress kept a silver vase in that niche, with fresh flowers from the garden. Or sometimes in spring the girls would bring wildflowers down from the hillsides… .’
‘Is the steward drunk yet?’
He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Analaeus is hardly ever sober.’
‘Then perhaps I should ask: is he indisposed?’
‘If you mean unconscious, probably so. There’s a little house at the far corner of the estate where he likes to slip away when he’s able.’
‘The house where Sextus and the family stayed after Capito evicted him?’
Carus looked at me darkly. ‘Exactly. I saw Analaeus headed that way this morning after the master left, taking the new slave girl from the kitchens with him. That and a bottle of wine should keep him busy all day.’
‘Good, then we won’t be disturbed.’ I strolled into the next room. This was where they did their living. The place was scattered with the debris of a party from the night before, the kind of party three rough-natured men might hold in the absence of their wives. A timid young slave girl was busy trying to straighten the mess, moving from disaster to disaster with a look of total helplessness on her face. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Carus clapped his hands at her and shooed her from the room.
Mounted prominently on one wall was a large family portrait done in encaustic on wood. I recognized Capito from my glimpse of him the day before: a white-haired, waspish-looking man. His wife was a stern matron with a large nose. They were flanked by various grown children and their spouses. The entire family seemed to be glaring at the artist as if already suspicious of being overcharged.
‘How I detest them,’ Carus whispered. I looked at him in surprise. He kept his eyes fixed on the painting. ‘The whole lot of them, rotten to the core. Look at them all, so smug and self-satisfied. This portrait was the first thing they did after they moved into the house, brought an artist all the way from Rome to do it. So eager to capture for all posterity that gloating look of triumph on their faces.’ He seemed unable to go on speaking; his lips trembled as if he were nauseated with loathing. ‘How can I tell you what I’ve seen in this house since they came? The meanness, the vulgarity, the deliberate cruelty? Sextus Roscius may not have been the best of masters, and the mistress may have had her moments of anger, but they never spat in my face. And if Sextus Roscius was a terrible father to his daught
ers, what business was that of mine? Ah, the girls were always so sweet. How I pitied them.’
‘A terrible father?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
Carus ignored me. He closed his eyes and turned away from the portrait. ‘What is it you want? Who sent you to Ameria? Sextus Roscius? Or that rich woman he spoke of in Rome? What have you come for, to kill them in their sleep?’
‘I’m not a killer,’ I told him.
‘Then why are you here?’ Suddenly he was fearful again.
‘I came because there was a question I forgot to ask you yesterday.’
‘Yes?’
‘Sextus Roscius – pater, not filius – saw a prostitute in Rome. I mean to say there were many prostitutes, but this one was special to him. A young girl with honeyed hair, very sweet. Her name—’
‘Elena,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘They brought her here not very long after the old man was murdered.’
‘Who brought her?’
‘It’s hard to remember exactly who or when. Everything was confusion, all this nonsense about lists and the law. I suppose it was Magnus and Mallius Glaucia who brought her here.’
‘And what did they do with her?’
He snorted. ‘What didn’t they do?’
‘You mean they raped her?’
‘While Capito watched. And laughed. He made the kitchen girls bring him food and wine while it was going on, scaring them out of their wits. I told them to stay in the kitchen, that I’d do the serving – and Capito struck me with a whip and swore he’d have my balls chopped off. Sextus Roscius was furious when I told him. This was when he was still allowed in the house, even though the soldiers had thrown him out. He argued with Capito constantly, and when he wasn’t arguing he sulked, stuck in the little house across the way. I know they argued a lot about Elena.’
‘And when they brought her here, was she already showing her pregnancy?’
He gave me an angry, frightened look, and I could see that he was wondering how I could know so much and not be one of them. ‘Of course,’ he snapped, ‘at least when she was naked. Don’t you understand, that was the point. Magnus and Glaucia claimed they could make her abort the child, especially if they both took her at once.’
‘And did they?’
‘No. After that they left her alone. Perhaps Sextus managed to soften Capito, I don’t know. Her belly grew larger and larger. She was put with the kitchen slaves and did her share of work. But right after she had the baby she disappeared.’
‘When was this?’
‘Three months ago? I can’t remember exactly.’
‘So they took her back to Rome?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe they killed her. It was either her they killed, or the baby, or both of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’
Without a word he led me out of the house and into the fields behind. He threaded a path through the grape arbours, wending past slaves who skulked and slept in the leafy shade. A winding pathway led up a hillside to the family gravesite whose stelae I had glimpsed the day before.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You can tell from the earth which are the newer ones. The old man was buried here, beside Gaius.’ He pointed to two gravesites. The older one was decorated with a finely carved stele picturing a handsome young Roman in the guise of a shepherd surrounded by satyrs and nymphs; there was a great deal of engraving below, in which I glimpsed the words GAIUS, BELOVED SON, GIFT FROM THE GODS. The newer mound was marked only with a simple uninscribed slab that had the look of being merely temporary.
‘You can tell how much his father doted on Gaius,’ said Carus. ‘A beautiful piece of work, isn’t it? Done specially by an artisan in the city who knew the boy; it looks just like him. He was very handsome, as you can see; the stone even captures that look in his eyes. Of course the old man so far has nothing better than a beggar’s stele, not even marked with his name. Sextus intended to have it there only until he could commission a special one done up from portraits of his father. You can wager Capito won’t be wasting any of his new fortune on a stone.’
He touched his fingers to his lips and then to the top of each slab, in the old Etruscan manner of showing respect for the dead, then led me to a weedy patch nearby. ‘And this was the grave that appeared after Elena vanished.’
There was nothing but a small mound of earth and a broken stone at the head to mark the spot.
‘We heard her giving birth the night before. Screaming loud enough to wake the whole house. Maybe Magnus and Glaucia had done something terrible to her insides, after all. The next day Sextus showed up at the house, though Capito had long since stopped allowing him inside. But Sextus forced his way in and cornered Capito in his study. They slammed the door, and I heard them arguing for a long time, first yelling and then very quiet. Later Elena was gone, but I didn’t know where. And then some of the other slaves told me about the new gravesite. It’s a small grave, isn’t it? But rather large for just a baby. Elena was small herself, hardly more than a girl. What do you think, could it hold both a girl and her baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Neither do I. And no one ever told me. But this is what I think: the baby was born dead, or else they killed it.’
‘And Elena?’
‘They took her to Chrysogonus, in Rome. That was the rumour among the slaves, anyway. Perhaps it’s only what we wish might be the truth.’
‘Or perhaps it’s Elena who’s buried here, and the child lives on.’
Carus only shrugged and turned back towards the house.
Thus I departed from Ameria even later than I had hoped. I took the advice of Titus Megarus and spent the night with his cousin. All that day on the road and that night under a strange roof I pondered what Carus had told me, and for some reason the words that lingered in my thoughts were not about Elena or her child, or about Capito and his family, but something he had said about his former master: ‘And if Sextus Roscius was a terrible father to his daughters, what business was that of mine?’ There was something disturbing in those words, and I puzzled over them until at last sleep captured me again.
XX
I reached Rome shortly after midday. The weather was sweltering, but the climate in Cicero’s study was quite chilly.
‘And where have you been?’ he snapped, pacing with crossed arms about the room, staring at me and then into the atrium, where a household slave sat pulling weeds. Tiro stood at a table before a bunch of scrolls unrolled and held down by weights. Rufus was there as well, sitting in the corner and tapping at his lower lip. The two of them gave me sympathetic glances that told me I was not the first to receive Cicero’s wrath that day. The trial was only four days away. The first-time advocate was not bearing up well.
‘But surely you knew I was in Ameria,’ I said. ‘I told Tiro before I left.’
‘Yes, good for you, running off to Ameria to let us handle the case here alone. You told Tiro you’d be back yesterday.’ He gave a small burp and made a face, clutching his belly.
‘I told Tiro I’d be gone for one day at the least, possibly more. I don’t suppose it would interest you to know that since I last saw you my home was invaded by armed thugs – and may have been attacked again – I can’t say because I haven’t yet returned there, having come straight here instead. They threatened my slave, who luckily escaped, and they butchered my cat, which may seem a small thing to you but which would be an omen of catastrophic proportions in a civilized country like Egypt.’
Tiro looked appalled. Cicero looked dyspeptic. ‘An attack on your house – on the night you left Rome? But that can’t possibly be connected to your work for me. How could anyone have known—’
‘I can’t answer that, but the message left in blood on my wall was explicit enough. “Be silent or die. Let Roman justice work its will.” Probably good advice. Before I left Rome I had to cremate my cat, find lodgings for my slave, and arrange for a guard t
o watch my doorstep. As for the journey, I invite you to ride to Ameria and back in two days and see if it leaves you in a better humour. My backside is so sore I can hardly stand, let alone sit. My arms are sunburned, and my insides feel as if I’d been picked up by a Titan and thrown like a pair of dice.’
Cicero’s jaw stiffened and quivered, his lips pursed. He was about to snap at me again.
I held up my hand to silence him. ‘But no, Cicero, don’t thank me yet for all my pains on your behalf. First, let’s sit calmly for a few moments while you have a servant fetch us something quenching to drink and bring a meal fit for a hungry man with an iron stomach who hasn’t eaten since daybreak. Let me tell you what I discovered on my rounds with Tiro the other day, and what I found out in Ameria. Then you can thank me.’
Which, after I had finished my tale, Cicero did quite profusely. His indigestion seemed to vanish, and he even broke his regimen to share a cup of wine with us. I plunged into the murky matter of my finances and found him completely amenable. He agreed not only to pay for any additional expenses incurred by leaving Vespa for a few extra days in Ameria, but even volunteered to pay for an armed professional to guard my house until after the trial. ‘Hire a gladiator from whomever you wish,’ he said. ‘Charge the debt to me.’ When I produced the petition of the citizens of Ameria asking Sulla to reverse the proscription of old Roscius, I thought he might name me his heir.
As I told the tale I paid careful attention to Rufus’s face. Sulla was his brother-in-law, after all. Rufus professed only disdain for the dictator, and in any event Titus Megarus’s tale implicated not Sulla but Chrysogonus, his exslave and deputy. Nevertheless, I feared he would be offended. For an instant I considered that it might have been Rufus who betrayed me to the enemies of Sextus Roscius and set Mallius Glaucia invading my house, but I could see no guile in his brown eyes, and it was hard to imagine that those quizzical eyebrows and freckled nose belonged to a spy. (Red hair on a woman is a warning, the Alexandrians say, but put your trust in a redheaded man.) Indeed, when the tale turned to Sulla and cast him in a poor light, Rufus seemed quietly pleased.
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