Roman blood

'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!'

Again something like the truth flickered in the room, like a pale light beside the lamplight, too weak to cast shadows. I shook my head, confused. I felt a hand on my shoulder and gave a start.

'Gordianus!' It was Rufus, without the girl. Corestus and Felix shrank back. 'Gordianus, I'm going to have to go back to the party. I've already sent the giri ahead. Chrysogonus sent a slave to look for m; Metrobius is about to sing. If I'm not there it will only attract their attention.'

'Yes, very well,' I said. 'Go on.'

'You'll be able to find your way out?'

'Of course.'

He looked around the room, uncomfortable amid the tawdry surroundings of the slave quarters. The role of spy didn't suit him; he was more at home playing the honest young noble in the sunlight of the open Forum. 'Are you almost done? I think you should try to leave as quickly as you can. Once Metrobius is finished, the entertainment will be over and there'll be all sorts of strange people wandering about the house. You won't be safe here.'

'We'll hurry,' I said, squeezing his shoulder and pushing him towards the doorway. 'Besides,' I said in a low voice, 'it can't have been so very awful, entertaining Aufilia for an hour.'

He twisted the comer of his mouth and shrugged my hand away.

'But I saw how you kissed her in the pantry.'

He spun around and glared at me, then looked askance at the others in the room and stepped back until they couldn't see him. He lowered his voice so that I could barely hear. 'Don't make a joke of it, Gordianus.'

I stepped into the hallway with him. 'It's not a joke,' I said. 'I only meant—'

'I know what you meant. But don't mistake me. I didn't kiss her for pleasure. I did it because I had to. I closed my eyes and thought of Cicero.' He tensed his face and then was suddenly

serene again, sedated like all lovers by the act of speaking the — beloved's name. He took a breath, smiled at me oddly, then turned to go. I watched him step through the curtain into the formal hallway. What I saw next made my heart skip a beat.

'So there you are, young Messalla!' The voice was golden indeed, like honey, like pearls in amber. He was striding up the hallway towards Rufus, twenty paces away. For just an instant I saw his face and he saw mine. Then the curtain fell.

I heard him through the cloth. 'Come, Rufus, Aufilia is back at work and you must return to pleasure.' He laughed a deep, throaty laugh, muscular and ripe like heavy grapes tumbling on flesh. ' "Eros makes fools of the old and slaves of the young." So says sweet Sulla, who certainly should know. But I won't have you prowling about up here looking for more conquests while old Metrobius warbles his best.'

There was no suspicion in his voice, and to my relief I heard it fade into silence as they retreated down the hallway. But I knew what I had seen when our eyes met. A slight wrinkle had appeared across his smooth and eminently golden brow, and a look of puzzlement sparked in his blue eyes as if he wondered which of his many servants I might be, and if not his slave then whose, and what I was doing upstairs during the party. If my expression in that instant was as transparent as his — if I had looked a tenth as startled and fearful as I felt — Chrysogonus would be sending bodyguards up to investigate as quickly as he could.

I stepped back into the room. 'Rufus is right. We must hurry. There's only one other thing I wanted to ask you,' I said; in fact, it was the only real reason I had for corning. 'There was a girl, a slave, a whore — young, blonde, pretty. From the House of Swans — Elena.'

I saw by their eyes that they knew her. They exchanged a conspiratorial glance, as if deciding who should speak. Felix cleared his slender throat.

'Yes, the girl Elena. The master was very fond of her.'

'How fond?'

There was a strained silence. I stood in the doorway, imagining sounds from the hall. 'Quickly!' I said.

It was Chrestus who spoke — Chrestus, the emotional one, the one who had wept before. But his voice was quite flat and dull, as if all passion had been burned from it. 'The House of Swans — you mentioned it, so you know where she came from. That was where the master found her. From the first she was different from the rest. At least the master thought so. We were only puzzled that he left her there so long. How he hesitated, as a man might hesitate in taking a bride. As if bringing her into the house would truly change his life, and such an old man wasn't sure he wanted such a change. He had finally made up his mind to buy her, but the brothel owner was a hard bargainer, he kept stalling and changing his price. The master was growing desperate. It was because of a note from Elena that he left Caecilia Metella's party that night.'

'Did he know that she was pregnant? Did you?'

They looked at one another thoughtfully. 'We didn't know at the time,' said Chrestus, 'but that was simple enough to figure out later.'

'Later, when she was brought to Capito's house?'

'Ah, yes, so you know that as well. Then perhaps you know what they did to her on the night she arrived. They tried to break her body. They tried to kill the child inside her, though they wouldn't resort to outright abortion — for some reason Capito thought that would offend the gods. Imagine that, from a man with so much blood on his hands! Afraid of the unborn and the ghosts of the dead, but quite happy to strangle the living.'

'And Elena?'

'They couldn't break her will. She survived. They kept her shut away from the others, the way he keeps us shut away here, but I managed to speak with her a few times, enough that I finally won a bit of her trust. She swore she'd never sent the message that brought the master out into the streets that night. I don't know if I believed her or not. And she swore the child was his.'

Something rustled across the floor behind me. I grabbed the hilt of my knife and turned, just in time to glimpse the long tail of a rat slithering between two rolled carpets stacked against the wall. 'And then the child was born,' I said. 'And then what?'

"That was the end of them both.'

'What do you mean?'

'The end of Elena. The end of the child.'

'What happened?'

'It was the night she went into her labour. Everyone in the household knew her time had come. The women seemed to know without being told; the male slaves were nervous and testy. That was the same night that the steward told Felix and me that Capito was sending us back to Rome. To Magnus, we thought; he was in the city then, along with Mallius Glaucia. But the steward said no, that we were being sent to a new master altogether.

"The next morning they herded us out bright and early and loaded us into an ox cart with a few other objects that were headed for Chrysogonus's house — furniture, crates, that sort of thing. And just before we were to leave, they brought out Elena.