We came into a broad sunlit square. Shops faced inward towards the central cistern where the locals came to draw their daily water.
A tall, broad-shouldered woman in dingy robes seemed to be the self-appointed mistress of the cistern, regulating the small line of slaves and housewives who stood about gossiping while they waited their turn. One of the slaves threw half a bucket of water on a group of ragged urchins loitering nearby. The children screamed with pleasure and shook themselves like dogs.
'Through there,' Tiro said. He studied the directions and bunched his eyebrows. 'At least I think so.'
‘Yes, I remember from yesterday: a narrow passage between a wine shop and a tall red-stained tenement.' I looked about the irregular square, at the six streets that radiated outward. Of them all, the street that old Sextus had taken that night was the narrowest, and because it took a sharp turn early on, it afforded the least visibility. Perhaps it was the shortest way to the woman called Elena. Perhaps it was the only way.
I looked about and spotted a man crossing the square. I took him to be a minor merchant or a shopkeeper, a man of some means but not rich, to judge from his worn but well-made shoes. From the easy way he comported himself, looking idly about the square without seeming to notice a thing, I assumed he was a local who had crossed it many times, perhaps every day. He paused beside the public sundial mounted on a low pedestal, furrowing his brow and wrinkling his nose at it. I stepped up to him.
.' "May the gods confound him,"' I quoted, ' "who first invented the hours, and who placed the first sundial in Rome!" '
'Ah!' He looked up, smiling broadly, and instandy picked up the refrain: ' "Pity me, pity me! They have segmented my day like the teeth of a comb!" '
'Ah, you know the play,' I began, but he was not to be interrupted.
' "When I was a boy my stomach was my clock, and it never steered me wrong; now even if the table overflows there's no eating till shadows are long. Rome is ruled by the sundial; Romans starve and thirst all the while!"
We shared a quiet laugh. 'Citizen,' I said, 'do you know this neighbourhood?'
'Of course. I've lived here for years.'
'Then I'm sure you can help me. Starving and thirsty I'm not, but there is another craving I long to satisfy. I'm a lover of birds.'
'Birds? None around here but the pigeons. Too stringy for my taste.' He smiled, showing a wide gap between his teeth.
'I was thinking of a more elegant fowl. At home in water, on the earth, or heaven-bound. A friend of a friend told me there were swans hereabout.'
He understood at once. 'The House of Swans, you mean.'
I nodded.
'Right down that street.' He pointed to the space between the wine shop and the red tenement.
'Might one of these other streets take me there as easily?'
'Not unless you want to walk twice as far as you need to. No, this street is the only practical way. It's a single long block with only a few dead-end streets branching off. And the walk will be worth your while,' he added with a wink.
'I certainly hope so. Come, Tiro.' We turned and walked towards the narrow street. I could see only a little way down its length. The buildings on either, side were high. Even in the bright morning light its. walls seemed to close around us, dank and musty, a dim crevice of mortar and brick.
The buildings along its length were mostly long tenements, many with only a single door and no windows at street level, so that we walked for long stretches with blank walls on either side. Upper storeys overhung the lower; they would provide shelter when it rained, but they would also create deep pockets of shadow at night. All along the way, every fifty paces or so, brackets were mounted in the walls, filled with the still-smouldering stumps of last night's torches. Under each torch a small stone was set into the wall; each stone was engraved with the profile of a swan, the crude sort of work done by cheap artisans. The tiles were advertisements. The torches were there to guide the night-time clientele to the House of Swans.
'It should be soon,' Tiro said, looking up from the tablet.
'We've passed a side street to our left already, and now another to our right. According to Rufus's directions, Sextus Roscius found a large bloodstain in the middle of the street. But you don't think it could still be there, after all this time—'
Tiro's words never quite became a question. Instead his voice dropped on the final word as he looked down between his feet and came to a sudden stop. 'Here,' he whispered, and swallowed loudly.
Consider that a man's body contains a great deal of blood. Consider also the porous nature of paving stones, and the barely adequate drainage of many Roman streets, particularly those at the lower elevations. Consider that we had received a very light rainfall that winter. Even so, old Sextus Roscius must have lain for a very long time in the centre of the street, bleeding and bleeding, to have left such a large, indelible stain.
The stain was almost perfectly round and as far across as a tall man's arm. Towards the edges it became blurred and faded, blending imperceptibly with the general grime. But nearer the centre it was still quite concentrated, a very dark, blackened red. The day-to-day stamp of passing feet had worn the surface of the stones to their normal, oily smoothness, but when I knelt down to look more closely I could still detect tiny, desiccated crusts of red in the deeper fissures.
I looked up. Even from the centre of the street it was impossible to see into any of the second-storey windows except at a severely oblique angle. To see from the windows onto the street one would have to lean far over the sill.
The nearest door was several feet farther up the street; this was the entrance to the long tenement on our left. The wall on our right was equally featureless, except for a food shop a little way behind us, at the corner where the street intersected with a narrow cul-de-sac. The shop was not yet open. A single square door, very tall and broad, covered the entire front. It was a wooden door, coloured with a pale yellow wash and marked along the top with various glyphs for grains, vegetables, and spices. Much lower down, in one corner, there was another marking on the door that made me suck in my breath when I saw it.
'Tiro! Here, come see this.' I hurried back and squatted down beside the door. From the level of a man's waist and below, the wood was covered with a film of soot and dust that thickened into a grimy band as it neared the street. Even so, at knee level, the handprint beneath the dirt was still quite clear to see. I placed my hand atop it and felt a strange shudder, knowing without a doubt that I was touching a bloody handprint left months before by Sextus Roscius.
Tiro looked at the handprint and back to the stain in the street. 'They're so far apart,' he whispered.
'Yes. But the handprint must have been made first.' I stood and walked past the door to the corner. The narrow little branch street was not a street at all, or if it ever had been, was now bricked in at the end with a solid two-storey wall. The space itself was perhaps twenty feet deep, and no more than five feet wide. At the far end someone had been burning refuse; bits of rubbish and bone peeked out of a waist-high pile of grey and white ash. No windows overlooked the space, either from the surrounding walls or from the tenement across the street. The nearest torches were mounted at least forty steps away. At night the little cul-de-sac would be utterly dark and unseen until one passed directly before it — the perfect place to He in ambush.