Roman blood

'Very well; the father of the elder Sextus Roscius inherits the family estates, leaving the rest with a pittance. The elder Sextus is his prime heir — I assume he was the oldest son in the family?'

'The only male child; the Roscii are not prolific breeders.'

'Very well, the elder Sextus inherits, much to the ongoing chagrin of his impoverished cousins Capito and Magnus. How impoverished were they?'

'Capito's father always held on to one of the farms down by the Nar, enough for a modest living. It was Magnus who had the worst of it. His father lost the one farm he inherited and finally killed himself That's why Magnus left for the city, to make his way there.'

'Bitter men. And if Magnus went to Rome to learn about life, murder is a lesson easily picked up. Now correct me if my memory fails: old Sextus marries twice. The first union produces Sextus filius. The wife dies, and Sextus pater remarries. A second son is born, Gaius, and the beloved young wife dies in childbirth. Young Sextus gets the run of the farms, while his father and Gaius go off to Rome. But then, three years ago, on the eve of Sulla's triumph, young Sextus summons his father and brother home to Ameria, and while they're here Gaius dies from something he ate. Tell me, Titus, what did the gossips in Ameria say about that?'

He shrugged and sipped more wine. 'Gaius wasn't known much hereabouts, though you'd find everyone agreed he was certainly a handsome young man. Personally, I found him too airy and cultivated; I suppose that was the way his father raised him, with tutors and fancy dinner parties. Not the boy's fault.'

'But his death — it was accepted as accidental?'

'There was never any question.'

'Suppose it wasn't an accident Might Capito and Magnus have had something to do with it?'

'It seems far-fetched. What would they have gained, except to spite his father? If they wanted to kill someone, why not the old man, or the whole family? Certainly, Capito is a violent man. He's stabbed and beaten more than one slave to death, and they say once down in Rome he threw a total stranger into the Tiber, just because the man wouldn't step aside on the bridge, and then dived in after him, trying to make certain he drowned. I suppose he and Magnus might have murdered Gaius from pure cruelty, but I don't think it's likely.'

'Nor do I. It's merely an incidental detail.' Perhaps it was the wine warming my blood, or the fresh breeze off the hillside; suddenly I felt fully awake and alert. I stared at the light from Capito's house. It wavered on the rising ripples of warm air and seemed to stare back at me like a baleful eye. 'Let's go to last September, then. Sextus Roscius is murdered in Rome. Witnesses see the chief perpetrator, a strong man in black robes with a lame left leg.',

'Magnus, without a doubt!'

'He appears to know his victim. He is also left-handed, and quite strong.' 'Magnus, again.'

'The assassin is accompanied by two other thugs. One is a blond giant.'

'Mallius Glaucia.'

'Yes. The other — who knows? The shopkeeper says he had a beard. The widow Polia could identify them all, but she'll never-be persuaded to testify. At any rate, it's Glaucia who arrives very early the next morning to give the news to Capito, carrying with him a bloody knife.'

'What? That's a detail I haven't heard before.'

'It comes from the taverner in Narnia.'

'Ah, the one with the blind father. They're both completely daft. Weak blood.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. The taverner tells me that Glaucia took the news straight to Capito. Who was the first to tell Sextus Roscius of his father's death?' I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

Titus nodded. 'Yes, that was me. I heard it eariy that morning at the common well in Ameria. When I saw Sextus that afternoon, I felt sure he knew already. But when I offered him my grief, the look on his face — well, it was a strange look. I couldn't call it grief; you must know there was little love between them. Dread, that's what I saw in his eyes.'

'And surprise? Shock?'

'Not exactly. Confusion and fear.'

'So. The next day a more official messenger arrives, sent by the old man's household in Rome.'

Titus nodded. 'And the day after that the remains of the dead man arrived. The Roscii are buried on a little hill beyond the villa; you can see the stelae from here on a clear day. Sextus buried his father on the eighth day and then began the seven days of mourning. Sextus never finishedthem.'

‘Why?'

'Because within that time the soldiers arrived. They must have come from Volaterrae, up north, where Sulla was campaigning against the last Marian remnants in Etruria. Anyway, the soldiers arrived and made a public announcement in the town square that Sextus Roscius the elder had been declared an enemy of the state and that his death in Rome had been a legal execution at the behest of our esteemed Sulla. His entire estate was forfeit. Everything was to be auctioned — lands, houses, jewellery, slaves. The date and the place were announced, somewhere in Rome. 'And how did young Sextus react?'

'No one knows. He went into seclusion at his villa, refusing to leave the house and seeing no visitors. All this might be quite proper for a man in mourning, but Sextus stood to lose everything. People began saying that perhaps it was true that his father had been proscribed. Who knows what the old man had been doing down in Rome? Perhaps he was a Marian spy, perhaps he had been found out in some plot to assassinate Sulla.'

'But the proscriptions legally ended on the first of June. Roscius was killed in September.'

Titus shrugged. 'You talk like an advocate. If Sulla wanted the man dead, why shouldn't it be legal, so long as the dictator declared it so?'

"Was there much interest in the auction?'

'Everyone knows they're fixed. Why bother? Some friend of Sulla's would end up paying a pittance for it all, and anyone else who cared to bid would be escorted from the hall. Believe me, we were all surprised when Magnus and a band of thugs from Rome showed up at Sextus's door with some sort of official writ, telling him to surrender all his property and vacate at once.'

'So he was pushed aside as easily as that?'

"There was no one to see what actually happened, except the slaves, of course. People love to embellish. Some say that Magnus came upon him burning myrrh at his father's grave, slapped the censer from his hands, and bullied him from the shrine at spear point. Others say he ripped the clothes from Sextus's back and chased him into the road naked, setting hounds after him. I never heard either tale from Sextus; he refused to speak of it, and I wouldn't press his shame.

'In any case, Sextus and his family spent one night in the home of a merchant friend in Ameria, and the next morning Capito moved into the villa. You can imagine the eyebrows that were lifted at that. Not everyone was displeased; Sextus has his enemies and Capito his friends in this valley. Sextus goes directly to Capito; again, no one was there to witness it. In the end, Capito allows Sextus back onto the property, making him stay in a little house at one comer of the estate where they usually put up seasonal labourers at harvest time.' 'And that was the end of it?'