Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  Tiro was silent as we crossed the Forum and ascended the Palatine. As we approached the trysting place, he grew increasingly agitated, and his face became as morose as an actor's mask. When we came within sight of "the little park, he touched my sleeve and paused.

  'Will you let me see her alone, only for a moment? Please?' he asked with his head bowed and his eyes lowered, as a slave begs permission.

  I took a deep breath. 'Yes, of course. But only for a moment. Say nothing to send her running.' I stood beneath the shade of a willow tree and watched him step quickly into the passage between the high walls of neighbouring mansions. He disappeared into the foliage, hidden by yew trees and a great effusion of roses.

  What he said to her in that green arbour, I never knew. When the time came that I might have asked him, I did not, and he never volunteered it. Perhaps Cicero interrogated him later and learned the details, but it seems unlikely. Sometimes even a slave may possess a secret, though the world allows him to possess nothing else.

  I waited only a short while, and not as long as I intended; with each passing instant I imagined the girl fleeing through the park's farther exit, until I could no longer stand still. There would never be a good time to get the truth from her, but this was the best opportunity I could hope for.

  The little park was shaded and cool, but choked with dust. Dust clung to the parched leaves of the roses and the ivy that crept up the walls. Dust rose underfoot where the grass had withered and worn thin. Twigs snapped and leaves crackled as I pushed my way through; they heard me coming, though I stepped as softly as I could. I glimpsed them through the tangle and in the next moment found them sitting together on a low stone bench. The girl stared up at me with the eyes of a frightened animal. She would have bolted were it not for Tiro's hand closed fast around her wrist.

  'Who are you?' She glared at me and grimaced as she tried to pull her hand free. She looked at Tiro, but he would not look back, staring instead into the tangled leaves.

  She sat absolutely still then, but I could see the panic and the furious calculation behind her eyes. 'I'll scream,' she said quietly. 'If no one else hears, the guards around Caecilia's house will. They'll come if they hear me screaming.'

  'No,' I said, taking a step back and speaking softly to calm her. 'You're not going to scream. You're going to talk.'

  ‘Who are you?'

  'You know who I am.'

  'Yes, I do. You're the one they call the Finder.'

  'That's right. And you have been found, Roscia Majora.'

  She chewed her hp and narrowed her eyes. For such a pretty gjri it was remarkable how unpleasant she could make her face. 'I don't know what you mean. So you found me sitting with this slave — he's Cicero's slave, isn't he? He lured me here, he told me he had a message from his master about my father—'

  She spoke not in the tentative tone of one fabricating a lie for later use, but as if it were the truth she spoke even as she invented it. I could see she had much experience in lying. Tiro still would not look at her. 'Please,' he whispered. 'Gordianus, can I go now?'

  'Absolutely not. I'll need you here to tell me when she's lying. Besides, you're my witness. Leave me alone with her and she's likely to invent sordid stories about my conduct.'

  'A slave can't be a witness,' she snapped.

  'Of course he can. I suppose they don't teach Roman law to farmers' daughters in Ameria, do they? A slave is a perfectly reliable witness, so long as his testimony is obtained under torture. Indeed, the law requires that a slave bearing witness must be tortured. So I hope you won't scream and begin inventing trouble, Roscia Majora. Even if what you feel for Tiro is no more than contempt, I don't think you'd want to be responsible for having him racked and burned with irons.'

  She glared at me. 'A monster, that's what you are. Just like the rest. I despise all of you.'

  The answer came effortlessly to my lips, but I paused for a long moment before saying it, knowing that after it was spoken there would be no turning back. 'But your father most of all.'

  'I don't know what you mean.' There was a catch in her breath, and the anger that shielded her face abruptly vanished to reveal the pain beneath. She was a child after all, despite her craftiness. She fumbled about, trying to cover herself with that bitter shield and only half succeeding, so that when she spoke again it was as if she were half-naked, brazenly hostile, but with her vulnerability painfully exposed

  'What is it that you want?' she whispered harshly. 'Why did you come here? Why can't you just leave us alone? Tell him, Tiro.' She reached for the arm that held her wrist and tenderly caressed it, glancing at Tiro and then casting her eyes demurely to the ground. The gesture seemed both calculating and sincere, manipulative and yet truly longing for tenderness in return. Tiro blushed to the roots of his hair. From the whiteness of his knuckles and the sudden grimace on Roscia's face, I saw that he was squeezing her wrist painfully tight, perhaps not even knowing it.

  'Tell him, Tiro,' she gasped, and no man could have said for certain whether the tears in her voice were genuine or not.

  'Tiro has already told me enough.' I looked straight at her but shut my eyes to the pain on her face. I made my voice cold and hard. 'Whom do you meet when you leave Caecilia's house — I mean, besides Tiro? Is it here on this spot that you give your father's secrets to the wolves who want to see him flayed alive? Tell me, you foolish child! What sort of bribe could convince you to betray your own flesh?'

  'My own flesh!' she shrieked. 'Betray my own flesh? I have no flesh! This is my father's flesh, this!' she tore her hand from Tiro's grasp, pushed up her sleeve and pinched a handful of the flesh on her arm. 'This flesh, this is his flesh!' she said again, pulling up the hem of her gown to show me her bare white legs, pinching at the taut flesh as if she could tear it from the bone. 'And this, and this! Not mine, but his!' she shouted, tearing at herself, at her cheeks and hands and hair. When she pulled at the neck of her gown to bare her breasts, Tiro stopped her. He would have embraced her, but she slapped him away.

  'Do you understand?' She shook as if she wept, but no tears came from her sparking, feverish eyes.

  'Yes,' I said. Tiro sat beside her, shaking his head, still confused.

  'Do you really understand?' A single tear sprang from one eye and threaded its way down her cheek. -

  I swallowed and slowly nodded. 'When did it begin?'

  'When I was Minora's age. That's why — ' Suddenly she sobbed and could not speak.

  'Minora — the little one, your sister?'

  She nodded. Tiro at last understood. His lips quivered. His eyes grew dark.

  'So this is your revenge — to help his enemies however you can.'

  'Liar! You said you understood! Not revenge — Minora.. ' 'To save your sister from him, then.'

  She nodded, turning her face in shame. Tiro watched her with a look of utter helplessness, moving his hands as if to touch her but afraid to. I could not bear to watch them both at once and turned my face to the empty, endlessly burning sky above.

  A breeze wafted through the park, causing the leaves to hiss and then subside. Somewhere far away a woman shouted, and then all was quiet. Deep within the silence one could still make out the distant murmur of the city below. A single bird flew high overhead and bisected the heavens.

  'How did they come to you? How did they know?'

  'A man… it was here. . one day.' She no longer sobbed, but her voice was thin and broken. 'I've come here every afternoon since we came to the city. It's the only place that reminds me of home, of the country. One day a man came — they must have been watching Caecilia's house, they knew I was his daughter. He scared me at first. Then we talked. Gossip, he called it, trying to make it sound innocent when he started talking about my father, as if he were just a curious neighbour. He must have thought he was so subtle, or else he thought I was an idiot, the way he started asking questions. He offered me a stupid little necklace, the kind of thing Caecilia would throw out with the rubbish. I told
him to put it away and stop insulting me. I told him I wasn't stupid and I knew just what he wanted. Oh, no, no, he says, and put on such a show I wanted to spit in his face. I told him to stop it, just to stop it! I knew what he wanted. I told him I knew he came from old Capito or Magnus, and he acted as if he'd never heard of them. I don't care, I told him. I know what you want. And I'll help you however I can. Finally he got it through his head. You should have seen his face.'

  I stared into the ivy above her head, into the dense, dust-choked darkness, the domain of wasps and snails and the myriad smaller forms of life devouring and redevouring one another. 'And you still come here every afternoon.'

  'Yes.'

  'And the same man always comes.'

  'Yes. And then I send him away, so I can be alone.'

  'And you tell him everything.'

  'Everything. What my father ate for breakfast. What my father said to my mother in their bed last night while I listened at the door. Every time Cicero or Rufus visits and what they say.'

  'And all the little secrets you can worm out of Tiro?'

  She hesitated for just an instant. 'Yes, that too.'

  'Such as my name, and the reasons Cicero hired me?'

  'Yes.'

  'Such as the fact that I asked Cicero to hire a guard for my house?'

  'Oh, yes. That was just yesterday. He questioned me very closely about that. He wanted to know very precisely what Tiro had told me, the exact derails.'

  'And of course you're very good at getting the exact details and remembering them.'

  She looked straight at me. Her face had grown hard again. 'Yes. Very good. I forget nothing. Nothing.'

  I shook my head. 'But what can you gain from it? What about your own life? What future can you have without your father?'

  'No worse than the past, no more horrible than all the years he made me… all the years I was his. . '

  Tiro again tried to comfort her, and again she pushed him away.

  'But even if you hate him with such a murderous hatred, what life will you have, you and your mother and little Minora, if this thing runs its course? With no one to turn to, reduced to beggars—'

  'We're beggars now.'

  'But your rather may be acquitted. If that happens, there's a chance we can restore his estates.'

  She looked at me hard, considering what I said, weighing it while her face showed no expression. Then she delivered her judgment. 'It makes no difference. If you offered me the choice of doing what I've done, or going back to the way things were before, then I'm still not sorry for it. I'd do it all again. I would betray him in every way I could. I would do anything to help his enemies put him to death. Already he's begun to move on her. I can see from the way he watches her when, my mother leaves the room. The look in his eyes — sometimes he looks at Minora, and then at me, and he smiles. Can you imagine? He smiles to show me that he knows I understand. He smiles to remind me of all the times he's taken his pleasure with me. He smiles, tliinking of all the pleasure over all the years that he could take from Minora. Even now, with his life almost over, he still thinks about it. Perhaps it's all he thinks about. So far I've kept her away from him — by guile, by lying; once I even threatened him with a knife. But do you know what I think? If they condemn him to death, it's the last thing he'll manage to do. Even if he has to do it in front of his executioners, he'll find some way to rip off her clothes and put himself inside her.'

  She shivered and swayed as if she might feint. In her helplessness she allowed Tiro to embrace her shoulders gently. Her voice was distant and hollow, as if it came from the moon. 'He smiles because a part of him still believes they'll never kill him. He thinks he'll live forever, and if that's true then there's no way I can hope to stop him.'

  I shook my head. 'You hate him so much you don't care whom your treachery hurts or how many innocent men you destroy. Twice now I might have been killed, because of you.'

  She blanched, but only for an instant. 'No man who helps my father is innocent,' she said dully. Tiro's embrace began to loosen.

  'And any man is worthy of your body if he can be of use to you?'

  'Yes! Yes, and I have no shame for it! My father has every right to me, so the law says. I'm just a girl, I'm nothing, I'm the dirt beneath his fingernails, hardly better than a slave. What weapons do I have? What can. I use to protect Minora? Only my body. Only my wits. So I use them.'

  'Even if your treachery means my death?'

  'Yes! If that's the price — if others have to die.' She began to cry again, realizing what she had said. 'Though I never thought, I never knew. It's only him I hate.'

  'And whom do you love, Roscia Majora?'

  She struggled to quiet her weeping. 'Minora,' she whispered.

  'And no one else?'

  'No one.'

  'What about the boy in Ameria, Lucius Megarus?' 'How do you know about him?'

  'And Lucius's father, the good farmer Titus, your father's best friend in the world?'

  'That's a lie,' she snapped. 'Nothing happened with him.'

  'You mean you offered yourself, and he refused you.' I was almost as surprise as Tiro when her silence admitted the truth. He pulled away from her entirely. She seemed not to notice.

  'Who else has known your favours, Roscia Majora? Other slaves in Caecilia's household, in return for spying on your father? The spy who meets you here, this creature of the enemy, what about him? What happens after you give him the information he wants?'

  'Don't be stupid,' she said dully. She was no longer weeping now, but sullen.

  I sighed. 'Tiro means nothing to you, does he?'

  'Nothing,' she'said.

  'He was only a tool that you used?'

  She looked into my eyes. 'Yes,' she said. 'Nothing more than that. A slave. A foolish boy. A tool.' She began to look at him, then turned away.

  'Please—' Tiro began.

  'Yes,' I said. 'You can go now, Tiro. We'll both go. There's nothing more to say.'

  He did not attempt to touch her again, nor did he look at her. We stepped between the tangled leaves until we emerged into the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Tiro shook his head, kicking at the dirt. 'Gordianus, forgive me,' he began, but I cut him short.

  'Not now, Tiro,' I said, as gently as I could. 'Our little tryst is not quite over. I suspect we are being watched even now — no, don't look over your shoulder; look straight ahead and notice nothing. Every afternoon, she said. She would not have seen the man before your visit; she will see him after. He's only waiting for us to leave. Follow me to that willow tree that stands at the corner of Caecilia's house. If we stand behind it, I think we shall be able to watch the approach to Roscia's hiding place unobserved.'

  We did not have long to wait. Only moments later a man in a black tunic stole across the open street and disappeared into the green defile. I motioned for Tiro to follow. We hurried back and made our way into the greenery until I began to hear their voices. I motioned for Tiro to stop. I strained my ears but caught only a few words before I glimpsed Roscia in a break between the yew trees. As luck would have it she saw me as well. For an instant I thought she would be silent, but she was loyal to her father's enemies to the end.

  'Go!' she shouted. 'Run! They've come back!'

  There was a sound of crashing foliage as the man blundered towards us.

  'No!' she screamed. 'Go the other way.' But the man was too panic-stricken to hear. He crashed headlong into my arms, butting his head against mine and knocking me to the ground. An instant later he was on his feet again, knocking Tiro aside. Tiro ran after him, but the pursuit was useless. I followed and met him in the open street, returning with a defeated look on his face and streaming sweat. He was holding his forearm, where a thorn on one of the rose bushes had scratched him.

  'I tried, Gordianus, but I couldn't catch him.'

  'Good; if you had you'd probably have got a knife in your ribs. It makes no difference. I got a close enough look at his face.'

  'Yes?
'

  'A familiar face in the Subura, and in the Forum for that matter. A hireling of Gaius Erucius the prosecutor. I thought as much. Erucius stops at nothing to obtain his evidence.'

  We made our way wearily down the slope of the Palatine, and though the way was downhill it nevertheless seemed long and hard. For interrogating the girl so harshly I felt a deep and bitter shame, but I had done it for Tiro's sake. He had loved her before; the revelation of her suffering made him love her even more — I had seen it blossom before my eyes. Such a hopeless passion could only bring him unending pain and regret. Only her own rejection could set him free, and so I had striven to stir up all her bitterness for him to see. But now I began to wonder if Roscia had conspired with me for Tiro's sake, for the final look she had given me before she spoke had told me she understood, and when she spoke of Tiro with such naked scorn it may have been the truth, or it may have been the last gift of tenderness she could give him.

  24

  We returned to the house on the Capitoline to find Rufus gone. Cicero was resting, but had left word that I should be shown to him at once. While Tiro quietly busied himself in the study, Old Tiro, the doorkeeper, led me deeper into the house, into a region I had not seen before.

  Cicero's bedchamber was as austere as the one he had given me. The only concession to luxury was the small private garden which opened onto the room, in which a tiny fountain sparkled and wept, reflecting in gentle waves the pensive face of the Minerva which stood over it. Cicero's idea of rest was apparently to work lying down rather than standing up. I found him lying flat on his back, poring over a sheaf of parchment in his hands. More bits of parchment lay scattered about the floor.

  I told him in cold, simple language the facts of Roscia's treachery — her father's abuse, her bitterness, Gaius Erucius's wiliness in turning the girl's desperation to his own advantage. The news seemed to have no effect on Cicero at all. He asked a few questions for clarification, nodded to show that he understood, then resumed reading with a curt wave of dismissal.