Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  No one moved. I watched the flickering caress of the lamplight as it Hcked in silhouette about the sleek flesh of the girl's thighs and hips. Finally she stooped and gathered up her gown. Tiro, wide-eyed and resolute, pushed his way from behind me and helped her cover herself. Rufus studiously looked elsewhere.

  'Well,' I finally said, 'I believe the master of the house himself has given us permission to go snooping upstairs. Shall we?'

  25

  The door through which Chrysogonus had vanished led into a short hallway. A narrow passage on the left opened onto the noise of a busy kitchen. The curtain which draped the opening on the right still swayed from Chrysogonus's passing. The girl led us through neither passage but instead to a door, at the end of the hall, that opened onto a winding flight of stone steps.

  'There's another staircase in the room where the master entertains,' she whispered, 'very showy, very fine marble, with a statue of Venus in the centre. But this is the stair the slaves use. If we pass anyone, just ignore them, even if they look at us oddly. Or better yet, give me a pinch hard enough to make me squeal and pretend you're all drunk. They'll think the worst for sure, and then they'll leave us alone.'

  But we met no one on the stairs, and the upstairs hall was deserted. From somewhere below we could hear the muffled music of flutes and lyres, and an occasional burst of applause or laughter — presumably in appreciation of Sorex's dance — but the upper floor was dim and quiet. The hallway was quite broad and fabulously decorated, opening onto wide, high rooms even more sumptuously appointed. Every surface seemed to be carpeted, draped, inlaid, or painted. Everywhere the eye turned there was a riot of colours, textures, and shapes.

  'Vulgar, isn't it?' said Rufus with a noble's disdain. Cicero would have agreed, but the furnishings were vulgar only for being so cramped and ostentatiously displayed. What impressed me most was the consistency of Chrysogonus's taste in acquiring only the

  best and most expensive handicraft and artwork — embossed silver, vessels of Delian and Corinthian bronze, embroidered coverlets, plush carpets from the East, finely carved tables and chairs with inlays of shell and lapis, intricate mosaics of richly coloured tiles, superb marble statues and fabulous paintings. That all these creations had been looted from the proscribed there could be no doubt; otherwise it would have taken a lifetime to accumulate so many things of such high quality and disparate origin. Yet no one could say that Chrysogonus had looted blindly. Let others take the chaff; for himself he had chosen only the best, with the trained eye for quality developed by slaves of the rich who dream of someday being free and rich themselves. I was glad that Cicero was not with us; to see Sulla's former slave living in stolen luxury on such a grandiose scale might have agitated his delicate bowels beyond endurance.

  The hallway narrowed. The rooms became less resplendent. The girl lifted a heavy hanging, allowing us to pass beneath; she dropped it, and all sound from downstairs vanished. The world changed as well, and we were abruptly back in a house of plain plastered walls and smoke-stained ceilings. These were the rooms of necessity — storage chambers, slave quarters, work rooms — yet even here the booty was piled high. Crates of bronze vessels were stacked in the corners, rolled carpets drooped like sleepy watchmen against the walls, chairs and tables were wrapped in heavy cloth and piled to the ceiling.

  The girl stole through the maze, glanced furtively about her, then motioned for us to follow. She drew back a curtain.

  'What are you doing up here?' asked a petulant voice. 'Isn't there a party on tonight?'

  'Oh, leave her alone,' said another, speaking through a mouthful of food. 'Just because Aufilia brings me extra portions and turns her nose up at your ugly face. . but who's this?'

  'No,' I said, 'don't get up. Stay where you are. Finish your meal.'

  The two of them sat on the hard floor, eating cabbage and barley from cracked clay bowls by the light of a single lamp. The room was small and narrow with bare walls; the tiny flame carved their wrinkles into caverns and cast their stooped shadows all the way to the ceiling. I stayed in the doorway. Tiro moved in close behind me, peering over my shoulder. Rufus hung behind.

  The lean, petulant one snorted and scowled at his food. 'For what you want, Aufilia, this room's too small. Can't you find an empty room elsewhere with a couch big enough for the three of you?'

  'Felix!' the other hissed, prodding his companion with his pudgy elbow and gesturing with the other. Felix glanced up and blanched as he noticed the ring on my finger. He had thought the three of us were all slaves, looking for a place to have a party of our own.

  'Forgive me, Citizen,' he whispered, bowing his head. They fell silent, waiting for me to speak. Before, they had been human beings, one of them lean and irritable, the other fat and good-natured, their faces alive in the warm glow as they fed themselves and parried with the girl. In an instant I saw them turn grey and distinguishable, wearing the identical blank face worn by every slave of every harsh master who ever breathed in Rome.

  'Look at me,' I said. 'Look at me! And if you aren't going to finish eating, then put down your bowls and stand up, so that I can see you eye to eye. We don't have much time.'

  'The knife was out before you could see it,' Felix was saying. 'In a flash.'

  ‘Yes, literally in a flash!' Chrestus stood beside him, nervously rubbing his pudgy hands, looking from his friend's face to mine and back again.

  Once I had explained who I was and what I wanted, they were amazingly willing, even eager, to speak to me. Tiro stood quietly beside me, his face pensive in the lamplight. I had posted Rufus at the nearest chamber along the main hallway so that he might turn back any wandering guests. I sent the girl with him; she was his excuse for loitering upstairs, and besides that, there was no reason to involve her any deeper, or to trust her with the full truth of what we had come for.

  ‘We never had a chance to help the master. They threw us out of the way, onto the ground,' said Felix. 'Strong men, as big as horses.'

  'And stinking of garlic,' Chrestus added. 'They'd have killed us, too, if Magnus hadn't stopped them.' 'Then you're sure it was Magnus?'I said.

  'Oh, yes.' Felix shuddered. 'I didn't see his face, he was careful about that. But I heard his voice.'

  'And the master called his name, remember, just before Magnus stabbed him the first time,' said Chrestus. ' "Magnus, Magnus, curse you!" in a thin little voice. I still hear it in my dreams.'

  Felix pursed his thin lips. 'Ah, yes, you're right. I'd forgotten that.'

  'And the other two assassins?' I asked.

  They shrugged in unison. 'One of them might have been Mallius Glaucia, though I can't be certain,' said Felix. 'The other man had a beard, I remember.'

  'A red beard?'

  'Perhaps. Hard to tell in that light. Even bigger than Glaucia and he stank of garlic'

  'Redbeard,' I muttered. 'And how was it that Magnus stopped them from killing you?'

  'He forbade it. "Stop, you fools!'" growled Chrestus, as if playing a role. ' "They're valuable slaves. Damage either one and it comes out of your wages!" Valuable, he called us — and look where we end up, oiling sandals and burnishing Master Golden-Born's chamber pots.'

  'But of value nonetheless,' I said. 'As if Magnus planned to inherit you himself'

  'Oh, yes.' Felix nodded. 'That must have been part of the plan all along, that he and Capito would somehow get their hands on the master's goods. Who can imagine how they did it? And now we end up back in the city, except that we never see the city. The Golden One keeps us trapped in these stuffy rooms day and night. You'd think we were being punished. Or hidden away, the same as he hides half his loot away. What kind of coincidence is it, I ask you, that I can look around these very rooms and see so many things that came directly from the master's old house by the Circus? Those chairs you saw stacked out there, and the yellow vase in the hallway, and the Alexandrian tapestry rolled up there in the corner — they all belonged to the master before he was murdered. No, we're
not the only property that ended up in Chrysogonus's hands.'

  Chrestus nodded in agreement.

  'The night of the murder,' I said, trying to draw them back. 'You were thrown aside, saved by a word from Magnus, and then you disappeared. Vanished into the night without a shout or a scream for help — don't deny it, I have a witness who swears to it.'

  Felix shook his head. 'I don't know what sort of witness you may have, but we didn't run away, not exactly. We ran down the street a way and then stopped. Chrestus would have kept running, but I held him back.'

  Chrestus looked crestfallen. 'That's true,' he said.

  'We stood in the dark and watched them do it. What a fine man he was! What a fine Roman! A slave couldn't ask for a better master. Never once in thirty years did he beat me, never once! How many slaves can say that?'

  'A terrible sight!' Chrestus sighed, his fleshy shoulders shivering. 'I shall never forget how his body quaked while they plunged the daggers into him. How the blood spurted into the air like a fountain. I thought right then that I should run back and throw myself on the street beside him and tell them, "Take my life as well!" I as much as said so, didn't I, Felix?'

  'Well…'

  'Don't you remember? I said to you, "Now our lives are as good as over. Things will never be the same." Didn't I? And wasn't I right?' He began to weep softly.

  Felix made a face and touched his friend's arm to comfort him, shrugging at me as if his own tenderness embarrassed him. 'That's true. I remember your saying that. Ah, it was a terrible thing, to see it done from start to finish. When it was over, when we knew the master was dead beyond all hope, we finally turned and ran all the way home. We sent a litter for his body, and the next morning I dispatched a messenger to Ameria.'

  Suddenly he drew his eyebrows together. 'What is it?' I asked.

  'Only something I just now remembered. Something strange. Strange then, and even stranger now that I recall it. When they were done — when there could be no doubt that the poor master was dead — the bearded one started to cut his head off'

  'What?'

  'Grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back sharp, then started slicing with a very long, very big blade. Like a butcher who'd spent a lifetime doing it. Magnus didn't see when he started, he was looking up at the windows, I think. But when he looked back, he shouted, told the man to stop it right away!

  Pushed him back and slapped him square across the face. Had to reach up high to do it.'

  'Slapped Redbeard in the middle of cutting a man's head off? I think that may be too stupid for me to believe.'

  Felix shook his head. 'You don't know Magnus if you think that would stop him. When he loses his temper he'd slap Pluto himself and spit in his eye. His hired friend knew him well enough that he didn't dare slap him back. But why do you think the man did that? Started to cut off the master's head, I mean?'

  'Habit,' I said. 'It's what they did in the proscriptions, isn't it? Cut off the head as proof to claim the state's reward. Redbeard was a professional, so used to cutting off the head as bounty that he automatically began to do the same to Sextus Roscius.'

  ‘But why did Magnus stop him? What did he care?' It was Tiro, looking strangely wise in the lamplight. 'That was the story that they put out, wasn't it, that Sextus Roscius was proscribed? So why not have the head cut off?'

  All three of them stared at me. 'Because — I don't know. Because Magnus wanted it to look like a murder, not a proscription? Wanted it to look as if it were done by thieves instead of assassins? Yes, because at that point they hadn't yet decided to use the false proscription story, nor were they yet planning to accuse Roscius filius of parricide…' The words seemed to make sense as I uttered them, and for an instant I thought I glimpsed the truth. Then it dickered and vanished, just as if one of us had blown out the lamp with a puff of air. I shook my head. 'I don't know.'

  'I don't understand the point of these questions, anyway,' Tiro said glumly. 'We knew all this before, from the mute boy.'

  'Little Eco is hardly a competent witness. And his mother would never testify.'

  'But what about Felix or Chrestus? Neither of them could give evidence, unless —' Tiro shut his mouth.

  'Unless what?' Chrestus, ignorant of the law, actually looked hopeful. Until I had told them, they hadn't even known about the trial of Sextus Roscius. The novel idea of giving evidence to a court seemed to charm Chrestus. Tiro, the slave of an advocate, knew better.

  'Unless,' I said, 'your new master allows it. And I think we all know that Chrysogonus will never allow it, so that is the end of that,' I said, knowing that it was hardly the end at all. In the morning I would ask Rufus to arrange for the court to send a formal request to Chrysogonus, asking that his slaves give evidence. It would be his right to refuse, but how would that refusal look? Cicero might just be able to pressure the man into allowing the court to question Felix and Chrestus. After all, they had never actually seen the killers' faces, and Chrysogonus might not realize how much they knew. And what excuse could Chrysogonus have to refuse evidence to the court, except to conceal his own complicity?

  What if he did submit and handed them over? Roman law in its wisdom demanded that any slave giving evidence must be subjected to torture. Evidence given freely by a slave was inadmissible; only torture was an acceptable seal of good faith. How would it be done? I imagined the corpulent Chrestus hanging naked from chains, his buttocks seared by hot irons; gaunt, brittle Felix bound to a chair with his hand in a vice.

  'And afterwards,' I said, to change the subject, 'you went to serve your master's son in Ameria?'

  'Not immediately,' Felix explained. 'And we never served young Sextus Roscius. We stayed on at the house near the Circus Flaminius, managing things, taking care of outstanding affairs, helping the steward. We didn't go to Ameria, not even to assist the master's funeral rites. And then one day Magnus appeared at the door, claiming the house was his and so were we. It was all there in the papers he carried; what could we do?'

  'That was when the cold weather began,' Chrestus said, 'but you'd think it was high summer, the way Magnus carried on. Oh, the old master lived well and enjoyed himself, make no mistake, but he knew that every vice has its place — drinking bouts belong in the tavern, pederasty in the baths, whoring in the brothel, not in the home, and every party has a beginning and an end. But with Magnus there was one vast, continual orgy interrupted by occasional brawls. The place stank of gladiators and gangs, and on some nights he even charged admission. It was harrowing, the people who passed in and out of that house desecrating the master's memory.'

  'And then came the fire,' said Felix sourly. 'Well, what can you expect in a house so given over to drunkenness and neglect? It started in the kitchen and then leaped onto the roof Magnus was so drunk he could hardly stand; he kept laughing at the flames — I actually saw him fall down from laughing. Which is not to say he was friendly. He kept making us go back into the house to bring out the valuables, threatening to beat us if we shrank back. Two of the slaves died that way, trapped inside when Magnus sent them to fetch his favourite slippers. That tells you how afraid of him we all were, that we were willing to face the flames rather than his wrath. I suppose living under Sextus Roscius had spoiled us all.'

  'Next thing you know,' Chrestus said, edging forwards, 'we're loaded onto carts and trundled up to Ameria, the middle of nowhere, and we end up in the big house having to serve Capito and that wife of his. Out of the fire and into the flood, as they say. You could hardly sleep at night for the sound of them screaming at each other. The woman is mad, I tell you. Not eccentric — Caecilia Metella is eccentric — but stark, raving mad. In the middle of the night I'd find myself summoned to her room and told to count the number of hairs in her hairbrush, and then to separate the grey hairs from the black ones. She wanted an account book kept of every hair she lost! And no time would do for it except the middle of the night, while Capito was asleep in his own room and she sat before her mirror staring at her fa
ce. I thought she'd have me counting her wrinkles next.'

  He paused for breath, and I thought he was done, but he had only started. 'And strangest of all, young Sextus Roscius kept appearing, the master's son. I'd thought he must be dead as well, or else we'd have ended up his slaves; but then I thought maybe he'd sold us and the land for some reason. But that hardly seemed right either, with him living practically like a prisoner or a pauper in a little cramped house on the estate. That was when we finally heard rumours about the proscription story from the other slaves, which made no sense at all. It seemed to me that the world had gone as crazy as Capito's wife.

  'And strangest of all was the way Sextus Roscius would act. Now the man, hardly knew us, granted, for he never spent more than moments in his father's house on the few occasions he came to Rome, and after all, we weren't his slaves. But you'd think he might have found some way to draw us aside, just as you've done, to ask about his father's death. We were there when it happened, after all; he must have known that. But whenever he saw us he looked the other way. If he was waiting to see Capito — come to beg him for money, usually — and one of us had some reason to be in the foyer, he'd wait outside instead, even in the cold. As if he were afraid of us! I began to think maybe they'd told him we'd been accomplices in his father's murder, as if anyone could believe such a thing about two harmless slaves!'