The older girl retreated after her mother, but before slipping through the curtain she turned and glanced back. Cicero and Rufus were taking their seats; they seemed not to notice her. I was struck again by her face – her wide mouth and smooth forehead, her deep brown eyes tinged with sadness. She must have seen me staring; she stared back with a frankness not often found in girls of her age and class. Her lips drew back, her eyes narrowed, and the look on her face suddenly became an invitation – sensual, calculated, provocative. She smiled. She nodded. Her lips moved, mouthing words I couldn’t make out.
Cicero and Rufus were across the room, their heads together, exchanging a hurried whisper. I glanced over my shoulder and saw only Tiro nervously shifting from foot to foot. She could only have been looking at me, I thought.
When I looked back, young Roscia Majora was gone, with only the swaying curtain and a faint scent of jasmine to mark her passing. The intimacy of her parting glance left me startled and confused. It was such a look as lovers exchange, yet I had never seen her before.
I stepped to the chair that had been set out for me. Tiro followed behind and slid it beneath me. I shook my head to clear it. Another look at the girl’s father sobered me instantly.
‘Where are your slaves, Sextus Roscius? Surely in your own home you would never think of asking your wife and daughters to fetch chairs for company.’
The baleful eyes glittered. ‘Why not? Do you think they’re too good for it? It does a woman good to be reminded every so often of her place. Especially women like mine, with a husband and father rich enough to let them sit about and do as they please all day long.’
‘Pardon, Sextus Roscius. I meant no offence. You speak wisely. Perhaps next time we should ask Caecilia Metella to fetch the chairs.’
Rufus suppressed a laugh. Cicero winced at my impertinence.
‘You’re a real wise-mouth, aren’t you?’ snapped Sextus Roscius. ‘A clever city man like these others. What is it you want?’
‘Only the truth, Sextus Roscius. Because finding it is my job, and because the truth is the one thing that can save an innocent man – a man like you.’
Roscius sank lower in his seat. In a test of brawn he would have been a match for any two of us, even in his weakened state, but he was an easy man to beat down with words.
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘Where are your slaves?’
He shrugged. ‘Back in Ameria, of course. On the estates.’
‘All of them? You brought no servants with you, to clean and cook, to take care of your daughters? I don’t understand.’
Tiro bent close to Cicero and whispered something in his ear. Cicero nodded and waved his hand. Tiro left the room.
‘What a well-mannered little slave you’ve got.’ Roscius curled his lip. ‘Asking his master’s permission to take a piss. Have you seen the plumbing here? Like nowhere else I’ve ever seen. Running water right in the house. My father used to talk about it – you know how an old man hates having to step outside to pass water in the night. Not here! Too good a place for slaves to take a shit if you ask me. Usually doesn’t smell this bad, except it’s so damned hot.’
‘We were talking about your slaves, Sextus Roscius. There are two in particular to whom I wish to speak. Your father’s favourites, the ones who were with him the night he died. Felix and Chrestus. Are they in Ameria, too?’
‘How would I know?’ he snapped. ‘Probably run off by now. Or had their throats slit.’
‘And who would do that?’
‘Slit their throats? The same men who murdered my father, of course.’
‘And why?’
‘Because the slaves saw it happen, you fool.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because they told me.’
‘Was that how you first learned of your father’s death – from the slaves who were with him?’
Roscius paused. ‘Yes. They sent a messenger from Rome.’
‘You were in Ameria the night he was killed?’
‘Of course. Twenty people could tell you that.’
‘And when did you learn he had been killed?’
Roscius paused again. ‘The messenger arrived two mornings after.’
‘And what did you do then?’
‘I came into the city that day. A hard ride. You can make it in eight hours if you have a good horse. Started at dawn, arrived at sundown – days are short in the autumn. The slaves showed me his body. The wounds …’ His voice became a whisper.
‘And did they show you the street where he was killed?’
Sextus Roscius stared at the floor. ‘Yes.’
‘The very spot?’
He shuddered. ‘Yes.’
‘I shall need to go there and see it for myself.’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t go there again.’
‘I understand. The two slaves can take me there, Felix and Chrestus.’ I watched his face. A light glimmered in his eyes, and I was suddenly suspicious, though of what I couldn’t say. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘but the slaves are in Ameria, aren’t they?’
‘I already told you that.’ Roscius seemed to shiver, despite the heat.
‘But I need to visit the scene of the crime as soon as possible. I can’t wait for these slaves to be brought to Rome. I understand your father was on his way to an establishment called the House of Swans. Perhaps the crime occurred nearby.’
‘Never heard of the place.’ Was he lying or not? I studied his face, but my instincts failed me.
‘Even so, perhaps you could tell me how to find the spot?’
He could, and did. I was a bit surprised at this, given his ignorance of the city. There are a thousand streets in Rome; only a handful have names. But between Cicero and myself, and the landmarks Roscius could remember, I was able to piece together the route. It was complicated enough to need writing down. Cicero looked over his shoulder, muttering about Tiro’s absence; fortunately Tiro had left his wax tablet and stylus on the floor behind Cicero’s chair. Rufus volunteered to write out the notations.
‘Now tell me, Sextus Roscius: do you know who murdered your father?’
He lowered his eyes and paused a very long time. Perhaps it was only the heat, making him groggy. ‘No.’
‘Yet you told Cicero that you fear the same fate – that the same men are determined to kill you as well. That this prosecution is itself an attempt on your life.’
Roscius shook his head and drew his arms around himself. The baleful light was extinguished. His eyes grew dark. ‘No, no,’ he muttered. ‘I never said such a thing.’ Cicero shot me a puzzled glance. Roscius’s mutterings grew louder. ‘Give it up, all of you! Give it up! I’m a doomed man. They’ll throw me in the Tiber, sewn up in a sack, and for what? For nothing! What’s to become of my little daughters, my pretty little daughters, my beautiful girls?’ He began to weep.
Rufus stepped to his side and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. Roscius violently shook it off.
I rose and made a formal bow. ‘Come, gentlemen, I believe we are finished here for the day.’
Cicero reluctantly stood. ‘But surely you’ve only begun. Ask him—’
I placed a finger to my lips. I turned towards the doorway, calling after Rufus, for I saw that he was still trying to comfort Sextus Roscius. I held back the curtain and allowed Cicero and Rufus to pass through. I looked back at Roscius, who was biting his knuckles and shivering.
‘There is some terrible shadow on you, Sextus Roscius of Ameria. Whether it’s guilt or shame or dread, I can’t make out. You obviously have no intention of explaining. But let this comfort you, or torment you, as the case may be: I promise you this, that I shall do everything I can to uncover your father’s murderer, whoever he may be; and I shall succeed.’
Roscius slammed his fists against the arms of his chair. His eyes glistened, but he no longer wept. The fire returned. ‘Do what you want!’ he snapped. ‘Another city-born fool. I never asked for your help. As if the
truth by itself mattered, or meant anything at all. Go on, go gawk at his bloodstains in the street! Go see where the old man died on his way to visit his whore! What difference will it make? What difference? Even here I’m not safe!’
There was more. I did not hear it. I dropped my arm and let the heavy curtains absorb his abuse.
‘It seems to me he must know much more than he’s telling,’ Rufus said as we walked through the corridors towards Caecilia’s wing.
‘Of course he does. But what?’ Cicero made a face. ‘I begin to see why Hortensius dropped the case.’
‘Do you?’ I asked.
‘The man is impossible. How am I to defend him? You see why Caecilia has him stuck away in this smelly corner. I’m embarrassed to have wasted your time. I’ve half a mind to drop the case myself.’
‘I would advise against that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my investigation has only started, and we’ve already made a promising beginning.’
‘But how can you say that? We’ve learned nothing, either from Caecilia or from Roscius himself: Caecilia knows nothing, and she’s only involved because of her sentimental attachment to the dead man. Roscius knows something, but he won’t tell. What could frighten him so badly that he won’t help his own defenders? We don’t even know enough to know what he’s lying about.’ Cicero grimaced. ‘Even so, by Hercules, I still believe he’s innocent. Don’t you feel it?’
‘Yes, perhaps. But you’re mistaken if you believe we’ve discovered nothing of value. I stopped asking him questions only because I already have enough threads to unravel. I’ve learned enough this afternoon to keep me busy for at least the next two days.’
‘Two days?’ Cicero tripped over a loose tile. ‘But the trial begins in eight days, and I still have no argument to build on.’
‘I promise you, Marcus Tullius Cicero, in eight days we shall know not only where Sextus Roscius was killed – which is no small detail – but also why and by whom and for what reason. However, at this moment it would make me very happy to solve a far simpler but no less pressing mystery.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Where can I find these much-celebrated indoor privies?’
Rufus laughed. ‘We’ve passed them already. You’ll have to turn back. The second door on your left will lead you to it. You’ll know it by the blue tile and a little relief of Triton above the door.’
Cicero wrinkled his nose. ‘I suspect you’ll know it from the smell. And while you’re at it,’ he called after me, ‘see if you can find where Tiro has got to. The same thing happened the last time we came – claimed he got lost among the hallways. If he’s still in the privy, I suppose he must be in some distress. Tell him it’s what he deserves for refusing to follow my example of fasting at midday. So much food, it’s an unnatural shock to the system, especially in this heat… .’
A turn to the left and a short walk down a narrow hallway brought me to the blue-tiled door. Small niches in the doorway contained tiny conical heaps of ash, the remnants of incense and sweet-burning woods to cover the fetid odours from within. On a day as stifling as this, the incense needed constant replenishing, but Caecilia’s servants had been lax in their duties, or else all the incense had been claimed for the mistress’s sanctum. I stepped through the heavy blue curtain.
There are no people on earth more adept at managing water and waste than the Romans. ‘We are ruled,’ as one Athenian wag once told me, ‘by a nation of plumbers.’ Yet here in one of the finest houses in the heart of the city something was badly amiss. The blue tiles needed scrubbing. The stone trough was clogged, and when I pressed the valve only a trickle of water emerged. A buzzing noise drew my eyes upward. Across the ventilating skylight stretched an immense spider’s web, filled with flies.
I did what I had come for and hurried from the room, sucking in a deep breath as I stepped through the blue curtain. The breath caught in my throat and I held it, listening to the sound of muffled voices from a doorway across the hall. One of the voices was Tiro’s.
I crossed the hall and inclined my head towards the thin yellow curtain. The other voice was that of a young woman, a countrified voice but of some refinement. She spoke a few muffled words, then let out a gasp and a moan.
I understood at once.
I might have withdrawn. Instead I stepped closer to the curtain and pressed my face against the thin yellow cloth. I had thought it was to me that she had given that baffling, seductive glance, for my sake that she had lingered in the room. I had thought her silent message had been for me to decipher. But she had been looking through me all the while, as if I were transparent. It was Tiro, standing behind me, to whom she had given the look, the message, the invitation.
Their voices were low and hushed, no more than ten feet away. I could barely make out the words.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she was saying. ‘It smells.’
‘But it’s the only room close to the privy – it’s the only excuse I could make – if my master comes looking for me I have to be close by …’
‘All right, all right.’ She let out a gasp. I heard them grappling. I pushed back the edge of the curtain and peered into the room.
It was a small storage room lit by a single window near the ceiling. A white light eddied into the room but seemed incapable of filling it. Motes of dust spiralled through the dense, heavy air. Amid the stacks of boxes, crates, and sacks, I caught a glimpse of naked flesh: Tiro’s thighs and buttocks. His thin cotton tunic was lifted up and pressed against his back by the girl’s clutching fingers. His groin pressed into hers, retreated and bolted convulsively forwards in the ancient, unmistakable rhythm.
Their faces were joined together, concealed by a block of deep shadow. The girl was naked. The sexless gown, lying shapeless and abandoned on the floor, had given no hint of the voluptuous lines of her figure or the breathtaking purity of her white flesh, gleaming and hard like alabaster, moist with sweat in the hot airless room so that she shone as if she had been rubbed with oil. Her body responded to his, pressing against him, wriggling upright against the wall with a strange convulsive motion, like a snake writhing on a hot pavement.
‘Soon,’ Tiro whispered, in a husky, breathless voice I would never have recognized – a voice neither slave nor free, the voice of the animal, the beast, the body.
The girl wrapped her hands around his buttocks, holding him tight. Her head was thrown back, her breasts lifted high. ‘A little longer,’ she whispered.
‘No, soon, they’ll be waiting for me… .’
‘Then remember, you promised, like last time – not inside me – my father would …’
‘Now!’ Tiro gave a long groan.
‘Not inside me!’ the girl hissed. Her fingers clawed into the tender flesh of his hips, pushing him away. Tiro staggered back, then forwards again, collapsing against her. He pressed his face to her cheek, then to her neck, then to her breasts as he slid downwards. He kissed her navel. He touched his tongue to the glistening strands of seed that clung to the smooth flesh of her belly. He embraced her hips and pressed his face between her legs.
I saw her naked, revealed in the soft, hazy light. Only her face was hidden in shadow. Her body was perfect, sleek and graceful, as pale and unblemished as heavy cream; neither a girl’s body nor a woman’s but the body of a girl awakening into womanhood, freed from innocence but unspoiled by time.
Without Tiro between us, I felt as naked as the girl. I drew back. The thin yellow curtain fell shut without a sound, gently rippling as if a stray breeze had wandered down the hallway.
VIII
‘So they did it right there, in the rich woman’s house, right under his master’s nose. Good for them!’
‘No, Bethesda. Right under my nose.’ I pushed the bowl away and looked up at the sky. The glow of the city obscured the minor stars, but the greater constellations shone bright and glittering in the warm evening air. Far away to the west a band of thunderclouds loomed like the
dusty wake of a mounted army. I lay back on the couch, closed my eyes, and listened to the stillness of the garden and all the little sounds inside it: the quiet sputtering of the torch, the chirr of a cricket beside the pond, the loud purring of Bast rubbing herself against the table leg. I heard the gentle clatter of dishes and Bethesda’s light footfall as she retreated into the house. The cat followed after her; the purring grew louder for an instant and then diminished into silence.
Bethesda returned. I heard the rustle of her gown, then felt her presence as she joined me on the couch. My head dipped from her weight, then soft hands lifted me and cradled my face on her lap. Another weight dropped onto the foot of the couch. Warm fur stroked against my bare feet, and I felt the vibration as much as heard it – the loud contented purr of a cat grown fat on delicacies from its master’s plate.
‘Did the meal displease you, Master? You ate almost nothing.’ Bethesda gently stroked my temple.
‘The meal was delicious,’ I lied. ‘It was the heat that killed my appetite. And all the walking I did today.’
‘You should not have walked so much in this heat. You should have made the rich woman hire you a litter.’
I shrugged. Bethesda stroked my neck and throat. I grasped her hand and ran her fingers against my lips. ‘So soft and smooth. You work so hard, Bethesda – I tease you for being lazy, but I know better – yet you keep your hands as soft as a vestal’s.’
‘Something my mother taught me. Even the poorest girl in Egypt knows how to care for her body and to keep herself beautiful. Not like these Roman women.’ Even with my eyes shut I could see the face she made, disdainful and haughty. ‘Putting creams and makeup on their faces as if they were laying mortar for bricks.’
‘The Romans have no style,’ I agreed. ‘No grace. Especially the women. The Romans became much too rich, much too quickly. They are a crude and vulgar people, and they own the world. Once upon a time they had manners, at least. A few of them still do, I suppose.’
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 9
