Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  The nature of time changes while the world sleeps. Moments congeal, moments attenuate, like lumps in thin cheese. Time becomes uneven, elusive, uncertain. To the sleepless the night seems eternal and yet still too short. I lay for a long time watching the flickering shadows above my head, unable to sleep but unable to follow any of the thoughts that flitted through my head, waiting for the cock's crow until I began to think the bird had overslept. Then it came at last, distinct and shrill in the warm, still air.

  I sprang up, realizing with a start that I had actually been asleep, or somewhere on sleep's border. For a confused moment I wondered if I had dreamed the cock's crow. Then I heard it again.

  Amid the light of many candles I changed my tunic and splashed my face. Bethesda had finally come to rest; I saw her curled on a straw mat beneath the colonnade at the far corner of the garden, surrounded by a ring of candles, asleep at last. She had chosen a spot as far as possible from the wall where Bast had died.

  I crossed the garden, walking quietly so as not to wake her. She lay curled on her side, hugging herself. The muscles of her face were soft and relaxed. A lustrous strand of blue-black hair lay in disarray across her cheek. In the glow of the candles she looked more like a child than I had ever seen her. A part of me longed to gather her up in my arms and carry her to the bed, to hold her there warm and safe, touching and dreaming until the morning sun on our faces made us wake. To forget about whatever sordid mess Cicero had swept me into, to turn my back upon it. Looking at Bethesda, I felt a wave of such tenderness that my eyes were veiled with tears. The image of her face dissolved; the candlelight melted into glistening mist. It is one thing, so I am told, to join fortunes in marriage to a free woman. It is something else to own a woman as a slave, and I have often wondered which is more bitter and which more sweet.

  The cock crowed again, joined this time by another from far away. In that instant I decided.

  I knelt beside Bethesda and woke her as gently as I could. Even so she gave a start and stared at me for a moment as if I were a stranger. I felt a pang of doubt and turned away, knowing that if she saw my hesitation it would feed her own fear, and there would be no end to it. I told her to dress and comb her hair and grab a handful of bread if she was hungry; as soon as she was ready we would take a short walk.

  I quickly turned aside and busied myself extinguishing candles. The house fell dark. After a short time Bethesda emerged from her room and announced that she was ready. Her voice had an anxious edge but no note of distrust or reproach: I uttered a silent prayer that I was making the right choice, and wondered' to whom I was praying.

  The pathway down the hill was lined with shadows, black within black. Beneath the glow of my torch the stones underfoot took on the properties of illusion, casting confused, jumbled shadows while their edges loomed up treacherous and sharp. It would almost have been safer to proceed without a light. Bethesda tripped and clutched my arm. She peered from side to side, unable to watch her feet for fear of something lurking in the darkness.

  Halfway down we entered a long trough of fog that flowed and eddied like a river in the notch of the valley, so thick that the torchlight reflected back upon itself, wrapping us in a cocoon of milky white. Like the uncanny heat that had gripped Rome, there was something freakish about the fog. It brought no refreshment or relief; the great mass was warm and clammy with abrupt pockets of chilled air. It devoured light. It swallowed sound. The grinding of the loose stones beneath our feet was muffled and distant. Even the crickets stopped their chirring, and for the moment the cocks were silent.

  Bethesda shuddered beside me, but I was secretly glad of the fog. If it would last until sunrise, I might be able to make my exit from the city unobserved even by eyes hired to watch me.

  The stablemaster was asleep when we arrived, but a slave agreed to wake him. He was disgruntled at first; I was an hour earlier than expected, and at any rate the slave could have handled the departure without his master being disturbed. But when I explained what I wanted and offered terms, he was suddenly wide-awake and genial.

  For the next two days at least he would take Bethesda into his household. I warned him not to work her too hard as she was accustomed to her own rhythms and unused to heavy work. (This last was a lie, but I had no intention of letting him work her to her limit.) If he could set her to some steady task, sewing perhaps, she would more than earn her keep.

  In the meantime I wanted to hire two sturdy slaves from him to watch my house. He insisted he could spare only one. I was sceptical until he roused the boy from bed. An uglier youth I had never seen, nor a larger one. Where he came from I could not imagine. He had the uncouth name of Scaldus. His face was raw and red, blistered by the intense sun of the past week; his hair stuck out in stiff bunches from his head, the same texture and colour as the bits of straw that clung to his scalp. If his sheer size failed to intimidate any caller, his face might do the job. He was to take up a post outside my door and not to leave it until I returned; a woman from the stables would bring him food and water through the day. Even if he proved weaker than he looked or a coward, he could at least raise an alarm if intruders came to the house. As for the expense, the stablemaster agreed to extend my credit The added fee I would pass on to Cicero.

  There was no need to return to the house. Everything I needed for the journey I had brought with me. A slave fetched Vespa from the stable. I mounted her, turned around, and saw Bethesda staring up at me with her arms crossed. She was not happy with the arrangement, as I could see from the tightness of her lips and the glimmer of anger in her dark eyes. I smiled, relieved. She was already recovering from the shock of the night before.

  I had an impulse to bend down and kiss her, even in front of the stablemaster and his slaves; instead I turned my attention to Vespa, calming her early-morning friskiness, guiding her into the street and easing her into a gentle trot. Long ago I learned that whenever a master shows affection for a slave in public the gesture must go awry. No matter how sincere, the act becomes patronizing, embarrassing, a parody. Even so, a sudden fear gripped me, a premonition that I might regret forever having denied myself that parting kiss.

  The fog was so thick I would have been lost had I not known the route by heart. The mist swirled around us, swallowing the clatter of Vespa's hooves and hiding us from the twice-million eyes of Rome. Around me the city seemed to stir, but that was an illusion; the city had never quite slept. All night long men and horses and wagons come and go in the deep-shadowed streets. I passed through the Fontinal Gate. I broke into a trot as I passed the voting stalls on the Field of Mars, taking the northward route of the great Flaminian Way.

  Rome receded, invisible, behind me. The muted stench of the city was replaced by the smells of tilled earth and dew. Hidden by mist, the world seemed open and boundless, a place without walls or even men. Then the sun rose over the black and green fields, dispelling every vapour before it. By the time I reached the great northward curving arm of the Tiber, the sky was hard as crystal, utterly cloudless, and pregnant with heat.

  Part Two

  Portents

  16

  The rich on their way from city to villa and back again travel in retinues with gladiators and bodyguards. The wandering poor travel in bands. Actors go in troupes. Any farmer driving his sheep to market will surround himself with shepherds. But the man who travels alone — so runs that proverb as old as the Etruscans — has a fool for a companion.

  Everywhere I have lived there is a belief among city folk that life in the countryside must be safer, quieter, less fraught with crime and menace. The Romans especially are blindly sentimental about country life, imbuing it with a tranquil, lofty character beyond the reach of crime or base passion. This fantasy is believed only by those who have never spent much time in the countryside, and especially by those who have never travelled for day after day across the roads that Rome has laid like spokes radiating through the world. Crime is everywhere, and nowhere is a man in more danger at any
given- moment than when he is on the open road, especially if he travels alone.

  If he must travel alone he should at least travel very fast, stopping for no one. The old woman who appears to lie hurt and abandoned beside the road may in fact be neither hurt nor abandoned nor even a woman, but a young bandit among a troupe of bandits, murderers, and kidnappers. A man can die on the open road or disappear forever. For the unwary a journey often miles may take an unexpected turn — that ends in a slave market a thousand miles from home. The traveller must be prepared to flee at a moment's

  warning, to scream for help without embarrassment, and to kill if he must.

  In spite of these thoughts, or perhaps because of them, I passed the long day without incident The distance I needed to cover required long, unbroken hours of hard riding. I steeled myself to it early on and fell into the rhythm of constant speed. Not a single rider overtook me during the day. I passed traveller after traveller as if they were tortoises beside the road.

  The Flaminian Way travels north from Rome, crossing the Tiber twice as it passes through south-eastern Etruria. At length it reaches the river Nar, which runs into the Tiber from the east. The road crosses a bridge at the town of Narnia and enters southernmost Umbria. A few miles north of Narnia a minor road branches west, back towards the Tiber. It ascends a series of steep hills and then drops into a shallow valley of fertile vineyards and pastures. Here, nesded in a V of land between the Tiber and the Nar, lies the sleepy hill town of Ameria.

  I had not travelled north of Rome in many years. When I had to leave the city, my business usually took me west to the seaport at Ostia or else south along the Appian Way through that region of lush villas and estates that ends at the resorts of Baiae and Pompeii, where the rich vent their boredom in manufacturing new scandals and plotting new crimes, and where the powerful had chosen sides in the civil wars. Occasionally I ventured east, into the rebellious territories that had vented their rage against Rome in the Social War. Southward and eastward I had seen first-hand the devastations often years of warfare — farms in ruin, roads and bridges destroyed, piles of corpses left uncovered and rotting until they turned to mountains of bones.

  I had expected the same in the north, but here the land was largely untouched; here the people had exercised caution to the extent of cowardice, always hedging their bets, sniffing out the neutral path until the clear victor emerged and men rushing to his side. In the Social War they had declined to join the other client states in pressing Rome for their rights, waiting instead until Rome called on them for help and so securing those same rights without revolt. In the civil wars they had danced the dagger's edge between Marius and Sulla, between Sulla and Cinna until the dictator emerged triumphant, Sextus Roscius the elder had himself been a declared supporter of Sulla even before it became convenient.

  Warfare had not spoiled the rolling pastures and dense woodlands that carpeted the southern reaches of Etruria and Umbria. Where in other regions one could sense in a thousand ways the disruptions brought by war and resettlement, here there was a feeling of timelessness, changelessness, almost of stagnation. People showed neither friendliness nor curiosity at a passing stranger; faces turned towards me from the fields, stared blankly, and turned back to their work with a disinterested scowl. The dry spring had so far yielded little colour to refresh the earth. Meagre trickles ran through stony creek beds; a fine dust covered and obscured everything. Heat lay heavy on the land, but there was something else that seemed to blanket the earth: a suffocating and dispiriting gloom beneath the blinding sunlight.

  The monotony of the journey gave me time to think; the ever-changing countryside freed my mind from the cobwebs and cul-de-sacs of Rome. Yet the mystery of who had mounted the attack on my house defied solution. Once I began the investigation in earnest, I was open to danger from any quarter — the shopkeeper and his wife, the widow, the whore, any of them might have passed an alert to the enemy. But my visitors had come on the very morning after I first met with Cicero, even as I was on my way to the scene of the crime, before I had interviewed anyone. I counted the names of those who knew from the day before that I had been engaged in the case: Cicero himself, and Tiro; Caecilia Metella; Sextus Roscius; Rufus Messalla; Bethesda. Unless the plot against Sextus Roscius was more convoluted and madly illogical than I could imagine, none of these people had any reason for driving me from the case. There was always the possibility of an eavesdropping servant in either Cicero's or Caecilia's house, a spy passing information to the enemies of Sextus Roscius; but given the loyalty inspired by Cicero and the kind of punishments to be incurred under Caecilia, the likelihood seemed absurdly small. Yet someone had known of my involvement early enough to see that hired enforcers were on my doorstep the very next morning, someone willing to kill me if I refused to turn aside.

  The more I turned it over in my head the more tangled the problem became, and the more the danger seemed to grow, until I began to wonder if Bethesda was safe where I had left her. Having no idea where the threat came from, how could I protect her against it? I pushed the doubt from my mind and stared at the road ahead. Fear was useless. Only the truth could bring me safety.

  At the second crossing of the Tiber I stopped for a while beneath the shade of a massive oak beside the riverbank. While I rested, a grey-haired farmer and three overseers came riding down from the north with a train of thirty slaves in tow. The farmer and two of his men dismounted and sat cross-legged in the shade, while the third led the slaves, who were chained neck to neck, down to the river to drink. The farmer and his men kept to themselves. After a few suspicious glances they ignored me completely. From overhearing bits of his conversation I gathered he was a Narnian who had recendy come into a property near Falerii; the slaves were being led to reinforce the workers there.

  I took a bite of bread and sipped at my wineskin and gently waved aside a bee that circled my head. The slaves lined up at the riverbank and dropped to their knees, splashing the dust from their faces and bending down to drink like animals. Most were middle-aged; a few were older, some much younger. All of them wore a sort of sandal for protection, a scrap of leather strapped to each foot. Otherwise they were naked, except for two or three who wore a thin rag tied about the waist. Many had fresh scars and welts across their buttocks and backs. Even the sturdiest among them looked haggard and unhealthy. The youngest, or at least the smallest, was a thin, naked boy at the end of the train. He sobbed continually and kept muttering incoherently about his hand, which he held in the air at a crooked angle. The overseer shouted at him, stamped his foot, and finally snapped his whip, but the boy would not stop complaining.

  I finished my bread, drank a mouthful of wine, and leaned back against the tree. I tried to rest, but the constant whimpering of the slave punctuated by the slashing of the whip set my nerves on edge. To a rich farmer, slaves are cheaper than cattle. When they die they are effortlessly replaced; the influx of slaves into Rome is endless, like crashing waves upon a beach. I mounted Vespa and rode on.

  The day grew hotter and hotter. Throughout the afternoon I saw hardly another person. The fields had been abandoned until a cooler hour, and the road was empty; I might have been the only traveller in the world. By the time I reached Narnia the fields began to stir again and the traffic slowly increased. Narnia itself is a busy market town. Gravestones and small temples line its outer streets. At the centre I came upon a wide square shaded by trees and ringed by shops and animal pens. The sweet smell of straw and the strong odours of oxen, cows, and sheep were heavy in the heated air.

  There was a small tavern at one corner of the square. Set into the open wooden door was a clay tile that showed a young shepherd with a lamb slung over his shoulders; a wooden sign above the lintel bade welcome to the Bleating Lamb. The place was dim and gloomy within, but cool. The only other customer was an emaciated old man who sat at a table in the corner, staring rigidly at nothing. My host was an enormously fat Etruscan with dark yellow teeth; he was so huge he almost
filled the tiny room. He was happy to bring me a cup of the local wine.

  'How far to Ameria?' I asked him.

  He shrugged. 'How fresh is your horse?'

  I looked about and caught my reflection in a plated ewer on the counter. My face was red and sweaty, my hair tangled and powdered with dust. 'No fresher than I am.'

  He shrugged again. 'An hour if you pressed it. Longer if you care to keep the animal's heart from bursting. Where have you come from?'

  'Rome.' The word was out before I could call it back. All day I had been reminding myself of the dangers of the countryside, yet a few moments inside a quaint tavern had already loosened my lips.

  'Rome? All this way in a single day? You must have had an early start. Have another cup. Don't worry, I'll cut it with plenty of water. Rome, you say. I have a son there, or used to. Fought for Sulla in the wars. Supposed to get a piece of land out of it. Maybe he did. I haven't had a word from him in months. All this way since this morning? You have family in Ameria?'

  It is easier to trust a fat face than a gaunt one. Treachery shows itself like a scar on a haggard face but hides well behind a plump, infantile blandness. But the eyes do not lie, and his were completely without guile. My host was merely curious, talkative, bored.

  'No,' I said. 'Not family. Business.'

  'Ah. It must be important for you to ride so long and so hard’

  Guileless or not, I decided to trust him with no more of the truth than I had to. 'My patron is an impatient man,' I said. 'As impatient as he is rich. There's a parcel of farmland up near Anieria in which he's taken an interest. I've come to check it out for him.'