Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  'Yes, perhaps. But you're mistaken if you believe we've discovered nothing of value. I stopped asking him questions only because I already have enough threads to unravel. I've learned enough this afternoon to keep me busy for at least the next two days.'

  'Two days?' Cicero tripped over a loose tile. 'But the trial begins in eight days, and I still have no argument to build on.'

  ‘I promise you, Marcus Tullius Cicero, in eight days we shall know not only where Sextus Roscius was killed — which is no small detail — but also why and by whom and for what reason. However, at this moment it would make me very happy to solve a far simpler but no less pressing mystery.'

  'And what is that?'

  'Where can I find these much-celebrated indoor privies?'

  Rufus laughed. 'We've passed them already. You'll have to turn back. The second door on your left will lead you to it. You'll know it by the blue tile and a little relief of Triton above the door.'

  Cicero wrinkled his nose. 'I suspect you'll know it from the smell. And while you're at it,' he called after me, 'see if you can find where Tiro has got to. The same thing happened the last time we came — claimed he got lost among the hallways. If he's still in the privy, I suppose he must be in some distress. Tell him it's what he deserves for refusing to follow my example of fasting at midday. So much food, it's an unnatural shock to the system, especially in this heat. . '

  A turn to the left and a short walk down a narrow hallway brought me to the blue-tiled door. Small niches in the doorway contained tiny conical heaps of ash, the remnants of incense and sweet-burning woods to cover the fetid odours from within. On a day as stifling as this, the incense needed constant replenishing, but Caecilia's servants had been lax in their duties, or else all the incense had been claimed for the mistress's sanctum. I stepped through the heavy blue curtain.

  There are no people on earth more adept at managing water and waste than the Romans. 'We are ruled,' as one Athenian wag once told me, ‘by a nation of plumbers.' Yet here in one of the finest houses in the heart of the. city something was badly amiss. The blue tiles needed scrubbing. The stone trough was clogged, and when I pressed the valve only a trickle of water emerged. A buzzing noise drew my eyes upward. Across the ventilating skylight stretched an immense spider's web, filled with flies.

  I did what I had come for and hurried from the room, sucking in a deep breath as I stepped through the blue curtain. The breath caught in my throat and I held it, listening to the sound of muffled voices from a doorway across the hall. One of the voices was Tiro's.

  I crossed the hall and inclined my head towards the thin yellow curtain. The other voice was that of a young woman, a countrified voice but of some refinement. She spoke a few muffled words, then let out a gasp and a moan.

  I understood at once.

  I might have withdrawn. Instead I stepped closer to the curtain and pressed my face against the thin yellow cloth. I had thought it was to me that she had given that baffling, seductive glance, for my sake that she had lingered in the room. I had thought her silent message had been for me to decipher. But she had been looking through me all the while, as if I were transparent. It was Tiro, standing behind me, to whom she had given the look, the message, the invitation.

  Their voices were low and hushed, no more than ten feet away. I could barely make out the words.

  'I don't like it here,' she was saying. 'It smells.'

  'But it's the only room close to the privy — it's the only excuse I could make — if my master comes looking for me I have to be close by…'

  'All right, all right.' She let out a gasp. I heard them grappling. I pushed back the edge of the curtain and peered into the room.

  It was a small storage room lit by a single window near the ceiling. A white light eddied into the room but seemed incapable of filling it. Motes of dust spiralled through the dense, heavy air. Amid the stacks of boxes, crates, and sacks, I caught a glimpse of naked flesh: Tiro's thighs and buttocks. His thin cotton tunic was lifted up and pressed against his back by the girl's clutching fingers. His groin pressed into hers, retreated and bolted convulsively forwards in the ancient, unmistakable rhythm.

  Their faces were joined together, concealed by a block of deep shadow. The girl was naked. The sexless gown, lying shapeless and abandoned on the floor, had given no hint of the voluptuous lines of her figure or the breathtaking purity of her white flesh, gleaming and hard like alabaster, moist with sweat in the hot airless room so that she shone as if she had been rubbed with oil. Her body responded to his, pressing against him, wriggling upright against the wall with a strange convulsive motion, like a snake writhing on a hot pavement.

  'Soon,' Tiro whispered, in a husky, breathless voice I would never have recognized — a voice neither slave nor free, the voice of the animal, the beast, the body.

  The girl wrapped her hands around his buttocks, holding him tight. Her head was thrown back, her breasts lifted high. 'A little longer,' she whispered.

  'No, soon, they'll be waiting for me…'

  'Then remember, you promised, like last time — not inside me — my father would…'

  'Now!' Tiro gave a long groan.

  'Not inside me!' the girl hissed. Her fingers clawed into the tender flesh of his hips, pushing him away. Tiro staggered back, then forwards again, collapsing against her. He pressed his face to her cheek, then to her neck, then to her breasts as he slid downwards. He kissed her navel. He touched his tongue to the glistening strands of seed that clung to the smooth flesh of her belly. He embraced her hips and pressed his face between her legs.

  I saw her naked, revealed in the soft, hazy light. Only her face was hidden in shadow. Her body was perfect, sleek and graceful, as pale and unblemished as heavy cream; neither a girl's body nor a woman's but the body of a girl awakening into womanhood, freed from innocence but unspoiled by time.

  Without Tiro between us, I felt as naked as the girl. I drew back. The thin yellow curtain fell shut without a sound, gently rippling as if a stray breeze had wandered down the hallway.

  8

  'So they did it right there, in the rich woman's house, right under his master's nose. Good for them!'

  'No, Bethesda. Right under my nose.' I pushed the bowl away and looked up at the sky. The glow of the city obscured the minor stars, but the greater constellations shone bright and glittering in the warm evening air. Far away to the west a band of thunderclouds loomed like the dusty wake of a mounted army. I lay back on the couch, closed my eyes, and listened to the stillness of the garden and all the little sounds inside it: the quiet sputtering of the torch, the chirr of a cricket beside the pond, the loud purring of Bast rubbing herself against the table leg. I heard the gentle clatter of dishes and Bethesda's light footfall as she retreated into the house. The cat followed after her; the purring grew louder for an instant and then diminished into silence.

  Bethesda returned. I heard the rustle of her gown, then felt her presence as she joined me on the couch. My head dipped from her weight, then soft hands lifted me and cradled my face on her lap. Another weight dropped onto the foot of the couch. Warm fur stroked against my bare feet, and I felt the vibration as much as heard it — the loud contented purr of a cat grown fat on delicacies from its master's plate.

  'Did the meal displease you, Master? You ate almost nothing.' Bethesda gently stroked my temple.

  'The meal was delicious,' I lied. 'It was the heat that killed my appetite. And all the walking I did today.'

  'You should not have walked so much in this heat. You should have made the rich woman hire you a litter.'

  I shrugged. Bethesda stroked my neck and throat. I grasped her hand and ran her fingers against my lips. 'So soft and smooth. You work so hard, Bethesda -1 tease you for being lazy, but I know better — yet you keep your hands as soft as a vestal's.'

  'Something my mother taught me. Even the poorest girl in Egypt knows how to care for her body and to keep herself beautiful. Not like these Roman women.' Even with my e
yes shut I could see the face she made, disdainful and haughty. 'Putting creams and makeup on their faces as if they were laying mortar for bricks.'

  The Romans have no style,' I agreed. 'No grace. Especially the women. The Romans became much too rich, much too quickly. They are a crude and vulgar people, and they own the world. Once upon a time they had manners, at least. A. few of them still do, I suppose.'

  '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 foil 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.

  9

  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 but. 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 silendy 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. Shops 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!" '