Roman blood

'A friend?'

My host wrinkled his nose. 'Some man's friend, but not mine.

Used to be a slave, and even then he was insolent and arrogant. Slaves take after their masters, they say, and that was never truer than with Mallius Glaucia.

'You'll find two branches of the Roscius family over the hill in Ameria,' he went on. 'Sextus Roscius, father and son, the respectable ones who built up their farms and their fortunes; and those two cousins, Magnus and Capito, and their clan. Foul types I'd call them, though I can't say that I've ever had personal dealings with them more than to serve them a cup of wine. But you can tell that some people are dangerous just by looking at them. That's Magnus and old Capito. Mallius Glaucia, the man who came thundering up from the south that morning, was Magnus's slave from birth, until Magnus freed him. A reward for some unspeakable crime, I have, no doubt. Glaucia went on serving Magnus, and still does. As soon as I saw it was him in the chariot, how I wished I'd stepped back into the doorway before he'd had a chance to see me.'

'A big man, this Mallius Glaucia?'

'The gods themselves don't come any bigger.'

'Fair of face?'

'Fair-haired, maybe, but as ugly as a baby. Red-faced like a baby, too. Anyway, he comes thundering up in his chariot. "You're open early," he says. I told him I wasn't open at all yet, and made to step back inside. I was just closing the door when he blocked it with his foot. I told him again I wasn't open for business and tried to close the door, but he held his foot fast. Then he pushed a dagger through the breach. As if that weren't bad enough, the dagger wasn't clean and shiny — oh, no. The blade was covered with blood.'

'Red or black?'

'Not too fresh, but not too old either. It was mostly dry on the blade, but in places where it was thickest it was still a little moist and red in the centre. Try as I might I couldn't close the door. I thought of crying out, but my wife is a timid woman and my son is gone, my slaves would be no match against Glaucia and what help could I expect…' He glanced guiltily at the old man in the corner. 'So I let him in. He wanted wine, straight, without water. I brought him a cup; he downed it in a single swallow and then threw it against the floor and told me to bring him a bottle. He sat right where you're sitting now and drank down the whole thing. I tried to leave the room several times, but whenever I moved away he'd begin talking to me in a loud voice, in such a way and such a tone that I knew he meant me to stay and listen.

'He said he'd come from Rome, starting well after dark. He said he came with terrible news. That was when he told me Sextus Roscius was dead. I didn't think much of it. "An old man," I said to him. "Was it his heart?" And Glaucia laughed. "Something like that," he said. "A knife in his heart, if you want to know." And he stabbed the bloody blade into the table.'

My host pointed with his short, stubby arm. I looked down and saw beside my cup a deep gouge in the rough-hewn wood.

'Well, I suppose he saw the look on my face. He laughed again — it must have been the wine. "Don't get all frightened, taverner," he says. "It wasn't me that did it. Do I look like the type who'd kill a man? But this is the very blade, pulled straight from the dead man's heart." Then he turned angry. "Don't look at me that way!" he says. "I told you I didn't do it. I'm just a messenger bringing bad news to the relatives back home." And then he staggered out of the door and got into his chariot and disappeared. Can you blame me if I say I'll never make a point of rising early again?'

I stared at the table, into the scar left by the blade. By a trick of light and concentration it seemed to grow deeper and darker the longer I stared into it. 'So this man came to tell Sextus Roscius that his father had been murdered?'

'Not exactly. That is, it wasn't Sextus Roscius he came to tell. The tale goes that Sextus didn't hear the news until later that day, after the gossip had already started making the rounds. A neighbour met him on the road and offered his condolences, never imagining that he hadn't yet heard. The next day a messenger sent by the old man's household arrived from Rome — he stopped in this very tavern — but by then it was stale news.'

'Then whom did this Glaucia come to tell? His old master, Magnus?'

'If Magnus was in Ameria. But that young scoundrel spends most of his time in Rome these days, mixing with the gangs, they say, and doing business for his elder cousin; I mean old Capito. That was probably the man Glaucia came to tell. Though you wouldn't expect Capito to weep for old Sextus; the two branches ofthe Roscius line are hardly fond of each other. The feud goes back for years.'

The bloody knife, the messenger sent in the middle of the night, the old family feud; the conclusion seemed obvious. I waited for my host to spell it out, but he only sighed and shook his head, as if he had reached the end of the tale.

'But surely,' I said, 'given what you've told me, no one believes that Sextus Roscius killed his father.'

'Ah, that's the part I can't figure out. Can't figure it out at all. Because what everyone knows, hereabouts anyway, is that old Sextus Roscius was killed by Sulla's men, or at least by some gang acting in Sulla's name.'

'What?'

'The old man was proscribed. Named an enemy of the state. Put on the lists.'

'No. You must be mistaken. You've confused the stories with another.'

'Well, there were a few others from these parts who had regular business and houses in Rome who got put on the lists, and either lost their heads or fled the country. But I wouldn't be confusing them with Sextus Roscius. It's common knowledge hereabouts that the man was proscribed.'

But he was a supporter of Sulla, I started to say, then caught myself.

'It's like this,' the taverner said. 'A band of soldiers arrived from Rome a few days later and made a public announcement, declaring that Sextus Roscius pater was an enemy of the state and as such had been killed in Rome, and his property was to be confiscated by force and put up for auction.'

'But this was last September. The proscriptions were already over; they'd been over for months.'

'Do you suppose that was the end of Sulla's enemies? What was to keep him from tracking down one more?'

I rolled the empty cup between my palms and stared into it. 'Did you actually hear this announcement yourself?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact. They announced it first in Ameria, I'm told, but they did the same thing here, seeing as the towns have families in common. We were shocked, of course, but the wars have left so much bitterness, so much loss, I can't say that anyone shed a tear for the old man.'

'But if what you say is true, then the younger Sextus Roscius was disinherited.'

'I suppose he was. We haven't seen him around here for quite some time. The latest gossip says that he's down in Rome, staying with his old man's patroness. Well, there's obviously more to the stories than meets the eye.'

'Obviously. Then who bought up the old man's estates?'

'Thirteen farms, that's what they say he had. Well, old Capito must have been first in line, as he came away with three of the best, including the old family homestead. They say he tossed out young Sextus himself, kicked him right out the door. But it's his property now, fair and square; he bid on it at the state auction down in Rome.'

'And the other farms?'

'All bought up by some rich fellow in Rome; I can't recall that I ever heard his name. Probably never even set foot in Ameria, just another absentee landlord buying up the countryside. Like your employer, no doubt. Is that your problem, Citizen, jealousy? Well, this is one plum that's already been picked. If you're looking for good land in Ameria you'll have to look farther.'