Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  Eco saw her and froze. 'Go on,' I said, 'never mind her. Go on. Sextus Roscius had fallen, he leaned against the door. What then?'

  The boy came towards me, limping again, and made a motion of seizing my toga with both hands and literally tossing me into the middle of the street. He limped quickly to the prostrate phantom and resumed kicking at it, moving forwards a little with each step until he stood directly over the massive bloodstain. He indicated his phantom companions at either side.

  'Three,' I said, 'all three of the assassins surrounded him. But where were the two slaves, then? Dead?' No. 'Wounded?' No. The boy made an obscene gesture of disgust and dismissal. The slaves had run. I glanced at Tiro, who looked profoundly disappointed.

  Eco squatted over the bloodstain, took out his knife and raised it high over his head, then brought it down within a finger's breadth of the street, over and over. He began to shake. He dropped forwards on his knees. He made a sound like a donkey quietly braying. He was weeping.

  I knelt beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. 'It's all right,' I said. 'It's all right. I only want you to remember a little more.' He drew away from me and wiped his face, angry at himself for crying. 'Only a little more. Was there anyone else who-saw? Someone else in the tenement, or across the street?'

  He glared at the shopkeeper's wife, who stood staring at us from the entrance to her store. He raised his hand and pointed.

  'Ha!' The woman crossed her arms and lowered her head, bull-like. "The boy's a liar. Either that, or he's blind as well as dumb.'

  The boy pointed again, as if by hurling his finger at her he could make her confess. Then he pointed at a little window above the shop, where the old man's face peered out at us for an instant before abruptly disappearing behind a pair of shutters closed from within.

  'A liar,' the woman growled. 'He should be beaten.'

  'You told me you lived at the back of the building, with no windows overlooking the street,' I said.

  'Did I? Then it's only the truth.' She had no way of knowing I had seen her husband only an instant before, looming directly above her like the disembodied face of a deus ex machina in a play.

  I turned back to Eco. 'Three of them, you said. Was there anything to distinguish them besides their cloaks? Tall, short, anything unusual? One of them limped, you say, the leader. Which was his crippled leg, the left or the right?'

  The boy thought for a moment, then poked at his left leg. He scrambled up and limped about me in a circle.

  'The left. You're certain?'

  'Ridiculous!' the old woman screamed. 'The stupid boy knows nothing! It was his right leg that was bad, his right!' The words were out before she could stop them. She slapped a hand over her mouth. A smile of triumph crept over my face, then withered as she gave me a look such as Medusa might have given Perseus. For a moment she stood confused, then she took decisive action. She stormed into the street and seized the handle of the wide door, then stamped back into the shop, pulling it closed behind her in a great arc while Tiro scurried out of her way. 'We will reopen,' she shouted to no one in particular, 'when this rabble has cleared the streets!' The door closed behind her not with a great boom, but with an equivocal rattle and a thud.

  'His left,' I said, turning back to the boy. He nodded. A tear ran down his cheek; he dabbed at it angrily with his sleeve. 'And his hand — which did he use for stabbing? Think!'

  Eco seemed to stare into some great depth that loomed beneath the bloodstain at our feet. Slowly, trancelike, he transferred the blade from his right hand to his left. He narrowed his eyes. His left hand gave a jerk, making miniature stabbing motions in the air. He blinked and looked up at me, nodding.

  ‘Left-handed! Good, left-handed with a game left leg — that should make him easy enough to spot. And his face — did you have a look at his face?'

  He shuddered and seemed to be holding back tears. He nodded slowly, gravely, not quite looking me in the eye.

  'A good look? Good enough so that you would recognize him ‘ if you were to see him again?'

  He gave me a look of pure panic and began scrambling to his feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back, close to the bloodstain. 'But how could you have seen him so closely? Where were you, in the window of your room?'

  He nodded. I glanced up.

  'Too far to get a really good look at a man's face in the street even in broad daylight. And yet it was dark that night, even if there was a full moon.'

  'Fool! Don't you understand?' The voice came from above me, from the window over the shop. The old man had pulled back the shutters and was peering down at us again, talking in a hoarse whisper. 'It wasn't that night that he got a good look at the man's face. They came back again, only a few days later.'

  'And how do you know that?' I asked, craning my neck.

  'They… they came into my shop.'

  'And how did you recognize them? Did you see the crime?'

  'Not me. Oh, no, not me.' The old man looked warily over his shoulder. ‘But there's nothing that happens in this street day or night that my wife doesn't see. She saw them that night, standing where I am at this very window. And she knew them when they came back a few days later in broad daylight, the same three — she knew their leader by his limp, and one of the others by the size of him — a big blond giant with a red face. The third had a beard, I think, but I can't say more than that. The leader was asking questions around the neighbourhood, same as you. Only we didn't tell them a thing, not a thing, not one word about Polia claiming to have seen the stabbing herself from start to finish, I swear it. Didn't like the look of them. At least I didn't tell them anything; only it seems, now that I recall, I had to leave the shop, just for a moment, while the old woman got rid of them — you don't suppose she went off with her big mouth…'

  Behind me I heard a strange animal cry. I turned, then ducked as Eco's knife went flying over my head. The old man's reflexes were amazingly quick. The knife went whistling towards the open window and struck against slammed shutters instead. The blade landed squarely in the wood, stuck for a long moment, then slipped free and fell to the street with a clatter. I turned and stared at Eco, amazed that a mere boy could have thrown the knife with such strength. He stood hiding his face in his hands, weeping.

  'These people are mad,' whispered Tiro.

  I grabbed Eco's wrists and pulled his hands from his face. He wrenched his head from side to side, trying to hide his tears. He pulled against my grip. I held him fast.

  'The men came back,' I said. 'They came for you. Could they have seen you watching, the night of the murder?'

  He wildly shook his head.

  'No. Then they found out from the old woman in the shop. She led them to you. But according to the gossip it was your mother who saw the crime. Did she? Was she with you in the window?'

  Again he shook his head. He wept.

  'You were the only one who saw it, then. You and the old woman across the street. But the old woman had the sense to keep herself out of it — and to lead them elsewhere. You told your mother all the details, didn't you? Just as you've told us? And she started putting it out as if she'd seen the crime herself. Am I right?'

  He shuddered and sobbed.

  'Wretched,' I whispered. 'Wretched. So they came that day looking for her, not you. And they found her in your apartment. You were there?'

  He managed to nod.

  'And then what? Threats, bribes?' I asked, knowing it was something much worse.

  The boy wrenched himself from my grip. Sobbing, whining, he began slapping his own face back and forth. Tiro huddled next to me, watching horrified. The boy finally stopped. He stamped his foot and looked me straight in the eye. Gritting his teeth, contorting his face into a mask of hate, he raised both arms. His hands moved slowly, stiffly, as if against his will. He made an obscene gesture, then crumpled his hands into fists as if they had been withered by fire.

  They had raped his mother, Polia who had seen nothing, who would have known nothing of th
e crime if he had not told her, whose only crime was spreading second-hand gossip to an old lady across the street. They had raped her, and Eco had seen it happen.

  I looked at Tiro to see if he understood. He covered his mouth and averted his eyes.

  The boy suddenly pushed me aside and ran to the knife in the street. He snatched it up and ran back to me, taking my hand in his and pressing my fingers around the hilt. Before I could pay him, before I could make any gesture of comfort or understanding, he ran back into the tenement, pushing aside the gaunt watchman who was stepping out of the doorway for a breath of air.

  I looked at the knife in my hand. I sighed and closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy from the heat. 'For his revenge,' I whispered. 'He thinks we bring justice, Tiro.'

  11

  We sat out the worst of the afternoon's heat in a small tavern. I had meant to press on to find the whore Elena — the House of Swans could be only a short distance beyond the scene of the murder — but I lacked the heart. Instead we turned back, trudging up the narrow street until we reached the open square.

  The concourse was almost deserted. Shopkeepers had closed their stalls. The heat was so intense that even the vendors with their carts had disappeared. Only a few vagrant children and a dog remained, playing in puddles about the public cistern. They had pushed back the iron cover, and one of the boys was standing dangerously close to the edge. Without even a glance over his shoulder, he hitched up his tunic and began urinating into the hole.

  A mosaic of a bunch of red grapes inlaid above the cornerstone of a small tenement advertised a nearby tavern. A sprinkling of purple and white tiles led around the corner and down a short flight of steps. The tavern was a small, musty room, dark and dank and deserted.

  The heat had exhausted me beyond speech. After so much walking I should have eaten, but I had no appetite. I ordered water and wine instead, and cajoled Tiro into sharing. I ordered more, and by that time Tiro needed no persuasion. With his tongue loosened and his guard down, I felt an urge to ask him outright about his tryst with the daughter of Sextus Roscius. If only I had! But for once I stifled my curiosity.

  Tiro was unused to the wine. For a while he became quite

  animated, talking about the events of the morning and the previous day, interrupting himself every now and again to say a word of praise for his wise master, while I sat bemused in my chair, only half-listening. Then he abruptly grew silent, staring at his cup with a melancholy look. He took a final sip, put down the cup, leaned back in his chair, and fell fast asleep.

  After a while I closed my eyes, and while I never quite slept, I dozed fitfully for what seemed a very long time, opening my eyes occasionally to the unchanging sight of Tiro splayed slack-jawed in the chair across from me, sleeping the absolute sleep of the young and innocent.

  The half dreams I dreamed, partly submerged in them, partly aware that I dreamed, were gnarled and uneasy, far from innocence. I sat in the house of Caecilia Metella, interviewing Sextus Roscius; he babbled and muttered, and though he seemed to speak Latin I could hardly make out a word he said. When he rose from his chair I noticed that he wore a heavy cloak, and when he walked towards me it was with a terrible limp, dragging his left leg behind him. I turned away from him, horrified, and ran into the hallway. Corridors branched and merged like passages in a maze. I was lost. I parted a curtain and saw him from the back. Beyond him the young widow was pinned against the wall, naked and weeping as he violently raped her. -But as happens in dreams, what I first saw changed into something else, and I realized with a start that the woman was not the widow; it was Roscius's own daughter, and when she saw that I watched she was unashamed. Instead she kissed the empty air and flicked her tongue at me.

  I opened my eyes and saw Tiro sleeping across the table. A part of me wanted to awaken, but was too weak. My eyes were too heavy, and I lacked the will to keep them open. Or perhaps this was only another part of the dream.

  In the storeroom of Caecilia's house, the man and the woman continued to copulate. I watched them from the doorway, as timid as a boy. The man in the cloak looked over his shoulder. I smiled to myself, for now I expected to see Tiro's face, flushed with excitement, innocent, embarrassed. Instead I saw Sextus Roscius, leering and transfixed with an unspeakable passion.

  I covered my mouth and started back, appalled. Someone tugged at my sleeve. It was the mute boy, his eyes red from weeping, biting his lips to keep himself from simpering. He tried to hand me a knife, but I refused to take it. He shoved me aside angrily, then hurled himself at the copulating figures.

  The boy stabbed at them brutally, indiscriminately. They refused to stop, as if the stabbing were a minor bother, not worth the pleasure it would cost them to pull apart and slap the boy aside. I knew somehow that they could not pull apart, that their flesh had in some way become merged and indistinct. Even as they heaved and writhed a pool of blood ran from their mingled bodies. It spread across the floor like a rich red carpet. It slithered beneath my feet. I tried to step forward but was frozen to the spot, unable to move or even to speak, as rigid as a corpse.

  I opened my eyes, but it seemed to make no difference. I saw only an inundation of red. I realized that I had not opened my eyes at all and still dreamed against my will. I reached up to push my eyes open with my fingers, but the lids held fast together. I struggled, panting and out of breath, unable to will myself out of the dream.

  Then, in an instant, I was awake. My eyes were open. My hands were on the table, trembling. Tiro sat across from me, peacefully napping.

  My mouth was as dry as alum. My head felt stuffed with wool. My face and hands were numb. I tried to call for the taverner and found I could hardly speak. It made no difference; the man was dozing himself, sitting on a stool in the corner with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest.

  I stood. My limbs were like dry wood. I staggered to the entrance and up the stairs to the alley, around the corner and into the square. The open concourse was blindingly bright and utterly deserted; even the urchins had abandoned it. I made my way to the cistern, knelt beside it and peered into the blackness. The water was too deep to give back any reflection, but I felt the rising coolness on my face. I pulled up the bucket, splashed my face, poured it over my head.

  I began to feel remotely human, but still weak. I wanted only to be at rest in my own home, beneath the portico, gazing out at the sunshine in the garden, with Bast slinking against my feet and Bethesda bringing a cool cloth to soothe my forehead.

  Instead I felt a tentative hand on my shoulder. It was Tiro.

  'Are you all right, sir?'

  I drew in a deep breath. "Yes.'

  It's the heat. This terrible, unnatural heat. Like a punishment. It dulls the brain, Cicero says, and parches the spirit.' 'Here, Tiro, help me up.'

  'You should He down. Sleep.'

  'No! Sleep is a man's worst enemy in this kind of heat. Terrible dreams…'

  'Shall we go back to the tavern, then?'

  'No. Or yes; I suppose I owe the man something for the wine.'

  'No, I paid from your purse before I left. He was asleep, but I left the money on the counter.'

  I shook my head. 'And woke him up before you left, so that no thieves could step in on him?'

  'Of course.'

  'Tiro, you are a paragon of virtue. You are a rose among thorns. You are the sweet berry in the midst of brambles.'

  'I am merely the mirror of my master,' he said, sounding proud rather than humble.

  12

  For a while the sun, though still high, was concealed behind a mantle of white clouds which blossomed from nowhere. The worst of the heat had passed, but what the city had absorbed throughout the day it now gave back. The paving stones and the bricks were like the walls of an oven, radiating heat. Unless another thunderstorm came to quench them, the stones would give off warmth throughout the night, baking the city and all who lived in it.

  Tiro urged me to turn back, to hire a litter to take me home or at least
to return by foot to Cicero's house on the Capitoline. But there was no point in coming so near the House of Swans without making a visit.

  We walked down the narrow street again, past the little cul-de-sac where the assassins had hidden, now covered over by the open door of the food shop. From its dim recess came the too-sweet smell of rotted fruit; I did not look inside. We stepped around the bloodstain and walked by the door that led to the widow's apartment. The gaunt watchman sat dozing on the steps. He opened his eyes as we passed and gave me a puzzled, disgruntled look, as if our interview had been so long ago he had forgotten our faces.

  The House of Swans was even closer than I had thought. The street narrowed and veered to the left, closing off the view behind us. Abruptly, on our right, unmistakable in its gaudy attempt at opulence, was our destination.

  How glamorous it must have appeared to men of modest means who made their way here by word of mouth, arriving by night, following the torches and the crude swan emblems that lined the street. How deliriously tawdry it must have appeared to a man of some refinement like old Sextus Roscius, how inviting to a man possessed of his overripe carnal appetites.

  The facade stood out in sharp contrast to all around it. The surrounding buildings were plastered over and washed in quiet shades of saffron, rust, or mottled cream. The plastered front of the House of Swans was a bright, gaudy pink, embellished here and there, as about the window pediments, with red tiles. A semicircular portico intruded into the street. A statue of Venus was perched atop the half-dome, too small to match the space; the quality of the workmanship was truly painful to look at, almost blasphemous. Even Tiro snickered when he saw it. Within the portico a large lamp hung from the half-dome; one might charitably have said it was boat-shaped, though I suspect the gentle curvature and blunted tip were intended to suggest a human appendage rendered obscenely out of scale. How many nights had Sextus Roscius followed its light like a beacon, up the three marble steps to the black grille, where I now stood with Tiro, shamelessly knocking in broad daylight?