'If you were planning on another look at Capito and company before you leave, you may be disappointed.'
'How's that?'
'I sent Lucius on an errand into town this morning, and on his way back he passed the three of them on the road. Magnus muttered something faintly insulting, so Lucius politely asked them where they were headed. Capito told him they were on their way to one of his new estates on the Tiber to do some hunting. Which means, of course, that they can't possibly be back before sundown, if they come back today at all.'
'Which leaves the house to Capito's wife.'
'Ah, there's the gossip. While Lucius was in town he heard they'd had a terrible row yesterday and the old woman stormed out of the house after nightfall to go to stay with her daughter in Narnia. Meaning there's no one in charge of the estate now except a grizzled old steward Capito inherited from Sextus Roscius. They say the man drinks wine all day and hates his new master. I only tell you this in case you had any unfinished business at Capito's house. The master and his wife and friends all being gone, I suppose that might be an inconvenience to you. Or perhaps not.'
He turned back to the general conversation wearing the subtle smile of a conspirator quite pleased with himself.
In fact, I left Titus Megarus with no intention of stopping again at Capito's house. I had already learned what I needed in coming to Ameria; I even carried in my pouch a copy of the petition Titus and his fellow citizens had submitted to Chrysogonus to protest against the proscription of Sextus Roscius. I hardly bothered to look back on the serenity of the Amerian valley as I left it. My thoughts as I guided my undistinguished mount up the hillside were all of Rome, of Bethesda and Cicero and Tiro; of the people on the street of the House of Swans. I frowned, remembering the widow Polia, then smiled, remembering the whore Electra; and I abruptly swung my mount around and headed back towards Capito's house.
The slave Carus was not pleased to see me. He recognized me with a plaintive look, as if I were a demon come especially to torment him.
'Why so glum?' I said, stepping past him into the vestibule. The walls had been freshly coloured with a pink wash. The tiled floor, checkered black and white, was obscured by drifts of sawdust, and the whole room rang with the unnatural echoes of a house under renovation. 'I should think this would be a holiday for you, with your master and mistress away.'
He screwed up his face as if he were about to tell a He and then thought better of it. 'What do you want?'
'What used to go here?' I asked, stepping closer to a niche containing a very bad copy of a Greek bust of Alexander. It was absurdly pretentious, certainly not the sort of thing the countrified young Sextus Roscius would have kept in his house; more like something you'd find in the home of a highwayman who loots the villas of the tasteless rich.
'A spray of flowers,' Carus said, staring bleakly at the copy with its vapid expression and wild tendrils of hair, almost more a Medusa than an Alexander. 'In the days before the change, my mistress kept a silver vase in that niche, with fresh flowers from the garden. Or sometimes in spring the girls would bring wildflowers down from the hillsides….'
'Is the steward drunk yet?'
He looked at me suspiciously. 'Analaeus is hardly ever sober.'
'Then perhaps I should ask: is he indisposed?'
'If you mean unconscious, probably so. There's a little house at the far corner of the estate where he likes to slip away when he's able.'
"The house where Sextus and the family stayed after Capito evicted him?'
Carus looked at me darkly. 'Exactly. I saw Analaeus headed that way this morning after the master left, taking the new slave girl from the kitchens with him. That and a bottle of wine should keep him busy all day.'
'Good, then we won't be disturbed.' I strolled into the next room. This was where they did their living. The place was scattered with the debris of a party from the night before, the kind of party three rough-natured men might hold in the absence of their wives. A timid young slave girl was busy trying to straighten the mess, moving from disaster to disaster with a look of total helplessness on her face. She wouldn't meet my eyes. Carus clapped his hands at her and shooed her from the room.
Mounted prominently on one wall was a large family portrait done in encaustic on wood. I recognized Capito from my glimpse of him the day before: a white-haired, waspish-looking man. His wife was a stern matron with a large nose. They were flanked by various grown children and their spouses. The entire family seemed to be glaring at the artist as if already suspicious of being overcharged.
'How I detest them,' Carus whispered. I looked at him in surprise. He kept his eyes fixed on the painting. 'The whole lot of them, rotten to the core. Look at them all, so smug and self-satisfied. This portrait was the first thing they did after they moved into the house, brought an artist all the way from Rome to do it. So eager to capture for all posterity that gloating look of triumph on their faces.' He seemed unable to go on speaking; his hps trembled as if he were nauseated with loathing. 'How can I tell you what I've seen in this house since they came? The meanness, the vulgarity, the deliberate cruelty? Sextus Roscius may not have been the best of masters, and the mistress may have had her moments of anger, but they never spat in my face. And if Sextus Roscius was a terrible father to his daughters, what business was that of mine? Ah, the girls were always so sweet. How I pitied them.'
'A terrible father?' I said. 'What do you mean?'
Carus ignored me. He closed his eyes and turned away from the portrait. 'What is it you want? Who sent you to Ameria? Sextus Roscius? Or that rich woman he spoke of in Rome? What have you come for, to kill them in their sleep?'
'I'm not a killer,' I told him.
'Then why are you here?' Suddenly he was fearful again. 'I came because there was a question I forgot to ask you yesterday.' 'Yes?'
'Sextus Roscius — pater, not filius — saw a prostitute in Rome. I mean to say there were many prostitutes, but this one was special to him. A young girl with honeyed hair, very sweet. Her name—'
'Elena,' he said.
'Yes.'
'They brought her here not very long after the old man was murdered.'
'Who brought her?'
'It's hard to remember exactly who or when. Everything was confusion, all this nonsense about lists and the law. I suppose it was Magnus and Mallius Glaucia who brought her here.'
'And what did they do with her?'
He snorted. 'What didn't they do?'
'You mean they raped her?'
'While Capito watched. And laughed. He made the kitchen girls bring him food and wine while it was going on, scaring them out of their wits. I told them to stay in the kitchen, that I'd do the serving and Capito struck me with a whip and swore he'd have my balls chopped off Sextus Roscius was furious when I told him. This was when he was still allowed in the house, even though the soldiers had thrown him out. He argued with Capito constantly, and when he wasn't arguing he sulked, stuck in the little house across the way. I know they argued a lot about Elena.'
'And when they brought her here, was she already showing her pregnancy?'
He gave me an angry, frightened look, and I could see that he was wondering how I could know so much and not be one of them. 'Of course,' he snapped, 'at least when she was naked. Don't you understand, that was the point. Magnus and Glaucia claimed they could make her abort the child, especially if they both took her at once.'