Roman blood

'Forgive me, Citizen,' he whispered, bowing his head. They fell silent, waiting for me to speak. Before, they had been human beings, one of them lean and irritable, the other fat and good-natured, their faces alive in the warm glow as they fed themselves and parried with the girl. In an instant I saw them turn grey and distinguishable, wearing the identical blank face worn by every slave of every harsh master who ever breathed in Rome.

'Look at me,' I said. 'Look at me! And if you aren't going to finish eating, then put down your bowls and stand up, so that I can see you eye to eye. We don't have much time.'

'The knife was out before you could see it,' Felix was saying. 'In a flash.'

‘Yes, literally in a flash!' Chrestus stood beside him, nervously rubbing his pudgy hands, looking from his friend's face to mine and back again.

Once I had explained who I was and what I wanted, they were amazingly willing, even eager, to speak to me. Tiro stood quietly beside me, his face pensive in the lamplight. I had posted Rufus at the nearest chamber along the main hallway so that he might turn back any wandering guests. I sent the girl with him; she was his excuse for loitering upstairs, and besides that, there was no reason to involve her any deeper, or to trust her with the full truth of what we had come for.

‘We never had a chance to help the master. They threw us out of the way, onto the ground,' said Felix. 'Strong men, as big as horses.'

'And stinking of garlic,' Chrestus added. 'They'd have killed us, too, if Magnus hadn't stopped them.' 'Then you're sure it was Magnus?'I said.

'Oh, yes.' Felix shuddered. 'I didn't see his face, he was careful about that. But I heard his voice.'

'And the master called his name, remember, just before Magnus stabbed him the first time,' said Chrestus. ' "Magnus, Magnus, curse you!" in a thin little voice. I still hear it in my dreams.'

Felix pursed his thin lips. 'Ah, yes, you're right. I'd forgotten that.'

'And the other two assassins?' I asked.

They shrugged in unison. 'One of them might have been Mallius Glaucia, though I can't be certain,' said Felix. 'The other man had a beard, I remember.'

'A red beard?'

'Perhaps. Hard to tell in that light. Even bigger than Glaucia and he stank of garlic'

'Redbeard,' I muttered. 'And how was it that Magnus stopped them from killing you?'

'He forbade it. "Stop, you fools!'" growled Chrestus, as if playing a role. ' "They're valuable slaves. Damage either one and it comes out of your wages!" Valuable, he called us — and look where we end up, oiling sandals and burnishing Master Golden-Born's chamber pots.'

'But of value nonetheless,' I said. 'As if Magnus planned to inherit you himself'

'Oh, yes.' Felix nodded. 'That must have been part of the plan all along, that he and Capito would somehow get their hands on the master's goods. Who can imagine how they did it? And now we end up back in the city, except that we never see the city. The Golden One keeps us trapped in these stuffy rooms day and night. You'd think we were being punished. Or hidden away, the same as he hides half his loot away. What kind of coincidence is it, I ask you, that I can look around these very rooms and see so many things that came directly from the master's old house by the Circus? Those chairs you saw stacked out there, and the yellow vase in the hallway, and the Alexandrian tapestry rolled up there in the corner — they all belonged to the master before he was murdered. No, we're not the only property that ended up in Chrysogonus's hands.'

Chrestus nodded in agreement.

'The night of the murder,' I said, trying to draw them back. 'You were thrown aside, saved by a word from Magnus, and then you disappeared. Vanished into the night without a shout or a scream for help — don't deny it, I have a witness who swears to it.'

Felix shook his head. 'I don't know what sort of witness you may have, but we didn't run away, not exactly. We ran down the street a way and then stopped. Chrestus would have kept running, but I held him back.'

Chrestus looked crestfallen. 'That's true,' he said.

'We stood in the dark and watched them do it. What a fine man he was! What a fine Roman! A slave couldn't ask for a better master. Never once in thirty years did he beat me, never once! How many slaves can say that?'

'A terrible sight!' Chrestus sighed, his fleshy shoulders shivering. 'I shall never forget how his body quaked while they plunged the daggers into him. How the blood spurted into the air like a fountain. I thought right then that I should run back and throw myself on the street beside him and tell them, "Take my life as well!" I as much as said so, didn't I, Felix?'

'Well…'

'Don't you remember? I said to you, "Now our lives are as good as over. Things will never be the same." Didn't I? And wasn't I right?' He began to weep softly.

Felix made a face and touched his friend's arm to comfort him, shrugging at me as if his own tenderness embarrassed him. 'That's true. I remember your saying that. Ah, it was a terrible thing, to see it done from start to finish. When it was over, when we knew the master was dead beyond all hope, we finally turned and ran all the way home. We sent a litter for his body, and the next morning I dispatched a messenger to Ameria.'

Suddenly he drew his eyebrows together. 'What is it?' I asked.

'Only something I just now remembered. Something strange. Strange then, and even stranger now that I recall it. When they were done — when there could be no doubt that the poor master was dead — the bearded one started to cut his head off'

'What?'

'Grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back sharp, then started slicing with a very long, very big blade. Like a butcher who'd spent a lifetime doing it. Magnus didn't see when he started, he was looking up at the windows, I think. But when he looked back, he shouted, told the man to stop it right away!

Pushed him back and slapped him square across the face. Had to reach up high to do it.'

'Slapped Redbeard in the middle of cutting a man's head off? I think that may be too stupid for me to believe.'

Felix shook his head. 'You don't know Magnus if you think that would stop him. When he loses his temper he'd slap Pluto himself and spit in his eye. His hired friend knew him well enough that he didn't dare slap him back. But why do you think the man did that? Started to cut off the master's head, I mean?'

'Habit,' I said. 'It's what they did in the proscriptions, isn't it? Cut off the head as proof to claim the state's reward. Redbeard was a professional, so used to cutting off the head as bounty that he automatically began to do the same to Sextus Roscius.'

‘But why did Magnus stop him? What did he care?' It was Tiro, looking strangely wise in the lamplight. 'That was the story that they put out, wasn't it, that Sextus Roscius was proscribed? So why not have the head cut off?'

All three of them stared at me. 'Because — I don't know. Because Magnus wanted it to look like a murder, not a proscription? Wanted it to look as if it were done by thieves instead of assassins? Yes, because at that point they hadn't yet decided to use the false proscription story, nor were they yet planning to accuse Roscius filius of parricide…' The words seemed to make sense as I uttered them, and for an instant I thought I glimpsed the truth. Then it dickered and vanished, just as if one of us had blown out the lamp with a puff of air. I shook my head. 'I don't know.'

'I don't understand the point of these questions, anyway,' Tiro said glumly. 'We knew all this before, from the mute boy.'

'Little Eco is hardly a competent witness. And his mother would never testify.'

'But what about Felix or Chrestus? Neither of them could give evidence, unless —' Tiro shut his mouth.

'Unless what?' Chrestus, ignorant of the law, actually looked hopeful. Until I had told them, they hadn't even known about the trial of Sextus Roscius. The novel idea of giving evidence to a court seemed to charm Chrestus. Tiro, the slave of an advocate, knew better.