I looked at the knife in my hand. I sighed and closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy from the heat. 'For his revenge,' I whispered. 'He thinks we bring justice, Tiro.'
11
We sat out the worst of the afternoon's heat in a small tavern. I had meant to press on to find the whore Elena — the House of Swans could be only a short distance beyond the scene of the murder — but I lacked the heart. Instead we turned back, trudging up the narrow street until we reached the open square.
The concourse was almost deserted. Shopkeepers had closed their stalls. The heat was so intense that even the vendors with their carts had disappeared. Only a few vagrant children and a dog remained, playing in puddles about the public cistern. They had pushed back the iron cover, and one of the boys was standing dangerously close to the edge. Without even a glance over his shoulder, he hitched up his tunic and began urinating into the hole.
A mosaic of a bunch of red grapes inlaid above the cornerstone of a small tenement advertised a nearby tavern. A sprinkling of purple and white tiles led around the corner and down a short flight of steps. The tavern was a small, musty room, dark and dank and deserted.
The heat had exhausted me beyond speech. After so much walking I should have eaten, but I had no appetite. I ordered water and wine instead, and cajoled Tiro into sharing. I ordered more, and by that time Tiro needed no persuasion. With his tongue loosened and his guard down, I felt an urge to ask him outright about his tryst with the daughter of Sextus Roscius. If only I had! But for once I stifled my curiosity.
Tiro was unused to the wine. For a while he became quite
animated, talking about the events of the morning and the previous day, interrupting himself every now and again to say a word of praise for his wise master, while I sat bemused in my chair, only half-listening. Then he abruptly grew silent, staring at his cup with a melancholy look. He took a final sip, put down the cup, leaned back in his chair, and fell fast asleep.
After a while I closed my eyes, and while I never quite slept, I dozed fitfully for what seemed a very long time, opening my eyes occasionally to the unchanging sight of Tiro splayed slack-jawed in the chair across from me, sleeping the absolute sleep of the young and innocent.
The half dreams I dreamed, partly submerged in them, partly aware that I dreamed, were gnarled and uneasy, far from innocence. I sat in the house of Caecilia Metella, interviewing Sextus Roscius; he babbled and muttered, and though he seemed to speak Latin I could hardly make out a word he said. When he rose from his chair I noticed that he wore a heavy cloak, and when he walked towards me it was with a terrible limp, dragging his left leg behind him. I turned away from him, horrified, and ran into the hallway. Corridors branched and merged like passages in a maze. I was lost. I parted a curtain and saw him from the back. Beyond him the young widow was pinned against the wall, naked and weeping as he violently raped her. -But as happens in dreams, what I first saw changed into something else, and I realized with a start that the woman was not the widow; it was Roscius's own daughter, and when she saw that I watched she was unashamed. Instead she kissed the empty air and flicked her tongue at me.
I opened my eyes and saw Tiro sleeping across the table. A part of me wanted to awaken, but was too weak. My eyes were too heavy, and I lacked the will to keep them open. Or perhaps this was only another part of the dream.
In the storeroom of Caecilia's house, the man and the woman continued to copulate. I watched them from the doorway, as timid as a boy. The man in the cloak looked over his shoulder. I smiled to myself, for now I expected to see Tiro's face, flushed with excitement, innocent, embarrassed. Instead I saw Sextus Roscius, leering and transfixed with an unspeakable passion.
I covered my mouth and started back, appalled. Someone tugged at my sleeve. It was the mute boy, his eyes red from weeping, biting his lips to keep himself from simpering. He tried to hand me a knife, but I refused to take it. He shoved me aside angrily, then hurled himself at the copulating figures.
The boy stabbed at them brutally, indiscriminately. They refused to stop, as if the stabbing were a minor bother, not worth the pleasure it would cost them to pull apart and slap the boy aside. I knew somehow that they could not pull apart, that their flesh had in some way become merged and indistinct. Even as they heaved and writhed a pool of blood ran from their mingled bodies. It spread across the floor like a rich red carpet. It slithered beneath my feet. I tried to step forward but was frozen to the spot, unable to move or even to speak, as rigid as a corpse.
I opened my eyes, but it seemed to make no difference. I saw only an inundation of red. I realized that I had not opened my eyes at all and still dreamed against my will. I reached up to push my eyes open with my fingers, but the lids held fast together. I struggled, panting and out of breath, unable to will myself out of the dream.
Then, in an instant, I was awake. My eyes were open. My hands were on the table, trembling. Tiro sat across from me, peacefully napping.
My mouth was as dry as alum. My head felt stuffed with wool. My face and hands were numb. I tried to call for the taverner and found I could hardly speak. It made no difference; the man was dozing himself, sitting on a stool in the corner with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest.
I stood. My limbs were like dry wood. I staggered to the entrance and up the stairs to the alley, around the corner and into the square. The open concourse was blindingly bright and utterly deserted; even the urchins had abandoned it. I made my way to the cistern, knelt beside it and peered into the blackness. The water was too deep to give back any reflection, but I felt the rising coolness on my face. I pulled up the bucket, splashed my face, poured it over my head.
I began to feel remotely human, but still weak. I wanted only to be at rest in my own home, beneath the portico, gazing out at the sunshine in the garden, with Bast slinking against my feet and Bethesda bringing a cool cloth to soothe my forehead.
Instead I felt a tentative hand on my shoulder. It was Tiro.
'Are you all right, sir?'
I drew in a deep breath. "Yes.'
It's the heat. This terrible, unnatural heat. Like a punishment. It dulls the brain, Cicero says, and parches the spirit.' 'Here, Tiro, help me up.'
'You should He down. Sleep.'
'No! Sleep is a man's worst enemy in this kind of heat. Terrible dreams…'
'Shall we go back to the tavern, then?'
'No. Or yes; I suppose I owe the man something for the wine.'
'No, I paid from your purse before I left. He was asleep, but I left the money on the counter.'
I shook my head. 'And woke him up before you left, so that no thieves could step in on him?'
'Of course.'
'Tiro, you are a paragon of virtue. You are a rose among thorns. You are the sweet berry in the midst of brambles.'
'I am merely the mirror of my master,' he said, sounding proud rather than humble.
12
For a while the sun, though still high, was concealed behind a mantle of white clouds which blossomed from nowhere. The worst of the heat had passed, but what the city had absorbed throughout the day it now gave back. The paving stones and the bricks were like the walls of an oven, radiating heat. Unless another thunderstorm came to quench them, the stones would give off warmth throughout the night, baking the city and all who lived in it.
Tiro urged me to turn back, to hire a litter to take me home or at least to return by foot to Cicero's house on the Capitoline. But there was no point in coming so near the House of Swans without making a visit.