Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  I had one last bit of business to transact before I made my way up the Esquiline. There are stables on the Subura Way, not far from the pathway that leads up to my house, where farmers visiting from the country find stalls and straw for their nags, and riders relay their steeds. The proprietor is an old acquaintance. I told him I would be needing a mount the next day for a very quick journey north to Ameria and back again.

  'Ameria?' He sat hunched over a bench, squinting at his tallies for the day beneath a newly lit lamp. 'A hard eight hours of riding, at the least.'

  'The least is the most I can manage. Once I'm there I'll need to' attend to my business with what's left of the day, and head back to Rome early the next morning. Unless I have to make a very fast escape before that.'

  The stablemaster scowled at me. He has never been quite sure what I do for a living, though he must suspect it has some criminal element, given the oddities of my comings and goings. Even so, he has never given me less than the finest service.

  'I suppose you're going alone, like a damned fool?'

  'Yes.'

  He hawked up a mass of mucus and spat onto the straw-littered floor. ‘You'll be needing a quick, strong horse.' 'Your quickest and strongest,' I agreed. 'Vespa.' 'And if Vespa's not available?'

  'I can see her tail from here, hanging over the gate to her stall.'

  'So you can. One of these days I suppose you'll come back to me with the stories of her sad end, and how you did your best to keep her out of harm's way. "Very fast escape" indeed. From what? But of course you're not telling me. She's my best mare. I shouldn't loan her to a man who'll ride her too hard and put her in danger besides.' '

  'It's more likely that one of these days I shall take Vespa and she'll return to you unscathed and without a rider, though I don't suppose you'll shed a tear over that. I'll be here before dawn. Have her ready for me.'

  'The usual fee?'

  'No,' I said, and watched his jowls droop. 'The usual — and a special gratuity besides.' In the combination of blue twilight and soft lamplight, I could make out the lines of a grudging smile on his ugly face. I would pass on the extra fee to Cicero.

  Day lingers longest on the summits of the seven hills of Rome. The sun had departed for good, but the hillside of the Esquiline was still brighter than the narrow, deep-shadowed artery at her feet. As I hurried up the rough pathway to my house, I entered a latitude of lingering, pale blue twilight. Above the hilltop the stars were already shining faintly in a sky of deepest blue.

  My nose told me the news first. The smell of excrement baked for long hours in the sun wafted down the dry cobblestones. Some time during the day my countrified neighbour had thrown a gift over her wall onto my walkway, and my other neighbour had not yet claimed it. From long habit I held my breath, hitched up my toga and stepped a little to the left as I approached the dark mass brooding like a toad on the walkway. By chance I happened to glance down, remembering with a smile the warning I had given Tiro about soiling his shoes.

  I stopped short. Despite the dying light and the softening shadows, the footprints embedded in the excrement had an almost preternatural clarity. Two men, at least, had paid a visit in my absence. They had both managed to step in the excrement on their way out.

  For no rational reason I quickened my pace. The beating of my heart was suddenly loud in my ears. Above its pounding I imagined I heard a woman calling my name from somewhere below, at the foot of the hill.

  The door to my house stood wide open. On the outer frame someone had smeared a dark, glistening handprint. I did not have to touch it to know; even in the colourless twilight I could see that the handprint had been made with blood.

  Within the house all was still. No lamps, no candlelight; the only illumination came from the lingering twilight in the central garden, a great lozenge of ghostly blue that seeped between the columns and into the open rooms. The floor spread beneath me dim and uncertain, like the surface of a pool, but directly before my feet I could make out quite clearly a spattering of blood — great drops of blood, some whole, some smeared as if they had been stepped upon.

  The droplets formed a trail that ended against the wall of Bethesda's room.

  At the very centre of the wall there was a great explosion of blood, black as pitch against the white plaster, with tiny filaments fanning towards the ceiling and a broad smear trailing down to the floor. Beside this was a message scrawled in blood. The letters were small, irregular, and clumsy. In the darkness I could make nothing of them.

  'Bethesda?' I whispered. The word sounded stupid and useless in my ears. I said it louder, and again louder, frightened by the shrillness in my voice. There was no answer.

  I stood very still. The silence was absolute. Darkness seemed to gather in the corners and seep outward, filling the room. The garden turned ashen grey beneath starlight and moonlight. Twilight was over. True night had begun.

  I stepped away from the wall, trying to think of where I might find a lamp and tinder. Bethesda had always tended to fires in the house. At the thought of her a great pit of dread opened inside me. At that moment I tripped against something on the floor.

  The thing was small, soft, motionless. I stepped back and slipped on blood. The shape at my feet was almost lost in darkness and mutilated beyond recognition, but I knew in an instant what it was, or had been.

  There was a flickering light at the door. I started back, cursing myself for having no weapon. Then I remembered the knife the mute boy had given me, still hidden in the folds of my tunic. I reached for it, searching blindly until I felt the hilt against my palm. I drew out the knife and walked quickly, steadily to the doorway, meeting the lamplight as it emerged from the darkness, slipping behind and seizing its bearer with an arm around her throat.

  She shrieked and bit at my forearm. I tried to break free, but her teeth were clamped against the flesh. 'Bethesda,' I pleaded, 'let me go!'

  She broke away and spun around, her back to the wall. She reached up to wipe the taste of blood from her mouth. Somehow she had managed to hold the lamp aloft and burning without loosing a drop of oil.

  'Why did you do that?' she screamed. She beat her fist against the wall behind her. There was a kind of madness in her eyes. By the: lamplight I saw the bruises on her face and throat. The neck of her gown had been badly torn.

  'Bethesda, are you hurt? Are you bleeding?'

  She closed her eyes and took a breath. 'Only a little hurt.' She held up her lamp and looked into the room, then made a face so wretched that I thought some new menace had entered the house. But when I followed her gaze to the floor I saw only the broken and blood-matted corpse of her beloved Bast.

  I tried to hold her, but Bethesda would not be held. She pulled away with a shiver and hurriedly went from room to room, using the flame from her lamp to light every lamp and candle. When the whole house was alight and she had satisfied herself that no intruders lurked in the darker comers, she bolted the door and went about the house again, closing all the windows.

  I watched her in silence. In the wavering light I saw the shambles that had been made of the house: furniture overturned, hangings ripped from the walls, objects smashed and broken. I lowered my eyes, numb from looking at chaos, and found myself studying the trail of blood on the floor, the mangled body of Bast, the writing on the wall. I stepped closer. The letters were of different sizes, many of them misshapen and inverted, but the spelling was correct. It had obviously been made by someone unused to writing, perhaps a complete illiterate reproducing the symbols from a copy. It hurt my eyes to read it:

  BE SILENT OR DIE. LET ROMAN JUSTICE WORK IT’S WILL.

  Bethesda walked past me, cutting a wide swathe around the corpse of the cat and averting her eyes from the wall. 'You must be quite hungry,' she said. Her voice was strangely calm and matter-of-fact.

  'Very hungry,' I admitted. I followed her to the back of the house, into the pantry.

  She lifted the lid from a pot and pulled out a whole fish, flipping it
onto the table where it gave off a strong smell in the warm, still air. Beside it lay a handful of fresh herbs, an onion, some grape leaves. 'You see,' Bethesda said, 'I had just come back from the market.'

  ‘When did they come? How many of them?'

  Two men.' She reached for a knife and brought it down on the fish, chopping the head off with a single, clean stroke. 'They came twice. First they came late this morning. I did as you've always said, I kept the door locked and bolted and talked to them through the httle window. I told them you were gone and probably would not be back until very late. They wouldn't say who they were. They said they would come back.'

  I watched as she cleaned the fish, using her fingernails and the sharp tip of the knife. Her hands were extraordinarily nimble.

  'Later I went to the market. I was able to get the fish very cheap. The day was so hot, the market was dusty, the man was afraid it would spoil before he could sell it. Fresh fish from the river. I finished my shopping and came up the hill. The door was closed, the latch was in place. I checked for that, as you always say to.'

  She began to chop the herbs, bringing the blade down hard and fast. I thought of the old shopkeeper's wife.

  'But the day was so Very hot, and so still. No wind from the garden at all. I could barely stay awake. I left the door open. Only for a little while, I thought, but I guess I forgot. I was so sleepy I went to my room to lie down. I don't know if I slept or not, but after a while I heard them in the vestibule. Somehow I knew it was the same men. I heard them talking low; then there was a loud noise, like a table overturned. They started shouting, calling your name, yelling obscenities. I hid in my room. I could hear them tramping through the house, turning over furniture, throwing things against the walls. They came into my room. You always imagine you can hide if you have to, but of course they found me right away.'

  'And then what?' My heart raced in my chest.

  'Not what you think.' She reached up to wipe a tear from her eye. 'The onion,' she said. I saw the bruise that circled her wrist like a bracelet, left by a strong man's grip.

  'But they hurt you.'

  'They pushed me. They hit me a few times. One of them held me from the back. They made me watch.' She stared down at the table. Her voice became grim. 'I had been squabbling with Bast all day. She was crazy from the smell of the fish. One of them found her in the kitchen and brought her to the vestibule. She bit him and scratched his face. He threw her against the wall. Then he pulled out a knife.' She looked up from her work. 'They wrote something. With the blood. They said it was for you, and that you shouldn't forget it. What does it say? Is it a curse?' 'No. A threat. It doesn't make sense.'

  'It has to do with the young slave who came yesterday, doesn't it? The new client, the parricide?'

  'Perhaps, though I can't see how. Cicero sent for me only yesterday. It wasn't until today that I started stirring up trouble — yet they must already have been on their way here, even before I spoke with the shopkeeper and his wife…. How did you escape from them?'

  'The same way I got away from you just now. With my teeth. The big one holding me was quite a coward. He squealed like a pig.'

  'What did they look like?'

  She shrugged. 'Bodyguards, gladiators. Fighters. Big men. Ugly.'

  'And one of them had a limp.' I spoke the words as a certainty, but Bethesda shook her head.

  'No. No limp. I watched them both walk away the first time.'

  'You're sure. No limp?'

  'The one who held me I didn't really see. But the one who wrote was very big, and blond, a giant. His face was bleeding from where Bast had scratched him. I hope he carries a scar.' She flipped the fish back into the pot, sprinkled it with the herbs and covered it all with grape leaves. She poured in water from an urn, put the pot over the fire, and stooped to tend the flame. I noticed that her hands had begun to shake.

  'Men like that,' she said, 'would not be satisfied with killing a cat, do you think?'

  'No. I think they might not.'

  She nodded. 'The door was still open. I knew I had to get away while the blond giant was still busy smearing letters on the wall, so I bit the man holding me as hard as I could, here.' She indicated the thickest part of her forearm. 'I slipped from his arms and ran out the door. They followed me. But they stopped suddenly as they were passing between the neighbours' walls. I could hear them behind me, making disgusted noises, snorting like pigs.'

  'That would be when they stepped in the pile of excrement.'

  ‘Yes. Imagine men who could smear their hands in cat's blood, turned into squeamish matrons from a bit of shit on their sandals? Romans!' The word came out of her mouth like venom. Only a native Alexandrian can pronounce the name of the world's capital with such withering disgust.

  'I lost myself in the street, until I thought they must be gone. But when I came back to the foot of the pathway I was afraid to come up. I went into the tavern across the street instead. I know a woman who cooks there, from seeing her in the market. She let me hide in one of the empty rooms upstairs, until I saw you coming home. She lent me a lamp. I called out from below, to warn you before you reached the house, but you didn't hear.' She gazed into the fire. 'Will they come back?'

  'Not tonight,' I assured her, having no idea whether they would or not.

  Having eaten, I longed for sleep, but Bethesda would not let me rest until the corpse had been disposed of.

  Romans have never worshipped animals as gods. Nor are they sentimental about household creatures. How could it be otherwise with a race that esteems human life so very little? Beneath the numbing apathy of their masters, the slaves of Rome, imported from all over the earth, but especially from the East, often lose whatever notions of sacred life they may have acquired as children in faraway lands. But Bethesda retained a sense of decorum and awe in the face of an animal's death, and in her way she grieved for Bast.

  She insisted that I build a pyre in the centre of the garden. She took a dress from her wardrobe, a fine gown of white linen which I had given her only a year before. I winced as I watched her rip the seams to form a single winding sheet. She wrapped the broken body in thickness after thickness, until no more blood would soak through to stain the outermost cloth. She laid the bundle onto the pyre and muttered something to herself as she watched the flames leap up. In the still air the smoke rose straight upwards, blotting out the stars.

  I longed for sleep. I ordered her to join me, but she refused to come until the floor had been washed clean of blood. She knelt beside a pail of heated water and scrubbed far into the night. I convinced her to leave the message on the wall untouched, though she clearly thought that leaving it was an invitation to all manner of magical disaster.

  She would not allow me to extinguish a single lamp or candle. I fell asleep in a house with every room alight. At some point Bethesda finished her scrubbing and joined me, but her presence brought me no comfort. All through the night she kept rising to check the bolts on the doors and windows, to refill the lamps and replenish the candles.

  I slept in fits and starts. I dreamed. Over endless miles of barren waste I rode a white steed, unable to remember when or how I had departed, unable to reach any destination. In the middle of the night I woke, feeling already weary from a long, unpleasant journey.

  15

  It would never do for Bethesda to stay alone in the house while I was gone. A year before, the problem would never have arisen; then I had kept two strong young male slaves. Except on those rare occasions when I needed an entourage or a bodyguard and took them with me, they had stayed with Bethesda — one to accompany her on errands, the other to watch the household in her absence, both to assist and protect her in the home. Best of all, they had given her someone to boss; at night I tried not to smile as she recounted her grievances against them and fumed at the gossip she imagined they passed behind her back.

  But slaves are a constant expense and a valuable commodity, especially to those barely able to afford them. A chance off
er from a client at a moment of need had weakened me into selling them both. For the last year Bethesda had managed on her own without incident, until now. My foolishness had almost brought us to complete disaster.

  I could not leave her alone. Yet, if I hired a bodyguard for the day, would she be any safer? The assassins might very well return; would a single bodyguard, or two, or three be enough if they were bent on murder? If I found somewhere for her to stay, I would be leaving the house deserted. Such men, foiled of capturing any prey, might very well set fire to everything I owned.

  Long before the first cock's crow of the morning I was awake, turning the dilemma over in my head. The only advice that came to me from staring at the candlelit ceiling was to drop the case entirely. There would be no trip to Amelia. At first light I could descend to the Subura and dispatch a messenger to Cicero, telling him I withdrew from his employ and asking him to settle my account. Then I could board myself up in the house with Bethesda all day, making love and strolling in the garden and complaining about the heat; and to any intruder who beat on the door I could simply say: 'Yes, yes, I choose silence over death! Let Roman justice work its will! Now go away!'

  There is a cock on the hillside which crows long before all the rest; I suspect he belongs to' my country neighbour who throws her offal over the wall — a country cock with country habits, unlike the lazier and more luxurious birds of Rome. When he crowed, there would be two hours until dawn. I decided I would rise then and make my choice.