I had one last bit of business to transact before I made my way up the Esquiline. There are stables on the Subura Way, not far from the pathway that leads up to my house, where farmers visiting from the country find stalls and straw for their nags, and riders relay their steeds. The proprietor is an old acquaintance. I told him I would be needing a mount the next day for a very quick journey north to Ameria and back again.
'Ameria?' He sat hunched over a bench, squinting at his tallies for the day beneath a newly lit lamp. 'A hard eight hours of riding, at the least.'
'The least is the most I can manage. Once I'm there I'll need to' attend to my business with what's left of the day, and head back to Rome early the next morning. Unless I have to make a very fast escape before that.'
The stablemaster scowled at me. He has never been quite sure what I do for a living, though he must suspect it has some criminal element, given the oddities of my comings and goings. Even so, he has never given me less than the finest service.
'I suppose you're going alone, like a damned fool?'
'Yes.'
He hawked up a mass of mucus and spat onto the straw-littered floor. ‘You'll be needing a quick, strong horse.' 'Your quickest and strongest,' I agreed. 'Vespa.' 'And if Vespa's not available?'
'I can see her tail from here, hanging over the gate to her stall.'
'So you can. One of these days I suppose you'll come back to me with the stories of her sad end, and how you did your best to keep her out of harm's way. "Very fast escape" indeed. From what? But of course you're not telling me. She's my best mare. I shouldn't loan her to a man who'll ride her too hard and put her in danger besides.' '
'It's more likely that one of these days I shall take Vespa and she'll return to you unscathed and without a rider, though I don't suppose you'll shed a tear over that. I'll be here before dawn. Have her ready for me.'
'The usual fee?'
'No,' I said, and watched his jowls droop. 'The usual — and a special gratuity besides.' In the combination of blue twilight and soft lamplight, I could make out the lines of a grudging smile on his ugly face. I would pass on the extra fee to Cicero.
Day lingers longest on the summits of the seven hills of Rome. The sun had departed for good, but the hillside of the Esquiline was still brighter than the narrow, deep-shadowed artery at her feet. As I hurried up the rough pathway to my house, I entered a latitude of lingering, pale blue twilight. Above the hilltop the stars were already shining faintly in a sky of deepest blue.
My nose told me the news first. The smell of excrement baked for long hours in the sun wafted down the dry cobblestones. Some time during the day my countrified neighbour had thrown a gift over her wall onto my walkway, and my other neighbour had not yet claimed it. From long habit I held my breath, hitched up my toga and stepped a little to the left as I approached the dark mass brooding like a toad on the walkway. By chance I happened to glance down, remembering with a smile the warning I had given Tiro about soiling his shoes.
I stopped short. Despite the dying light and the softening shadows, the footprints embedded in the excrement had an almost preternatural clarity. Two men, at least, had paid a visit in my absence. They had both managed to step in the excrement on their way out.
For no rational reason I quickened my pace. The beating of my heart was suddenly loud in my ears. Above its pounding I imagined I heard a woman calling my name from somewhere below, at the foot of the hill.
The door to my house stood wide open. On the outer frame someone had smeared a dark, glistening handprint. I did not have to touch it to know; even in the colourless twilight I could see that the handprint had been made with blood.
Within the house all was still. No lamps, no candlelight; the only illumination came from the lingering twilight in the central garden, a great lozenge of ghostly blue that seeped between the columns and into the open rooms. The floor spread beneath me dim and uncertain, like the surface of a pool, but directly before my feet I could make out quite clearly a spattering of blood — great drops of blood, some whole, some smeared as if they had been stepped upon.
The droplets formed a trail that ended against the wall of Bethesda's room.
At the very centre of the wall there was a great explosion of blood, black as pitch against the white plaster, with tiny filaments fanning towards the ceiling and a broad smear trailing down to the floor. Beside this was a message scrawled in blood. The letters were small, irregular, and clumsy. In the darkness I could make nothing of them.
'Bethesda?' I whispered. The word sounded stupid and useless in my ears. I said it louder, and again louder, frightened by the shrillness in my voice. There was no answer.
I stood very still. The silence was absolute. Darkness seemed to gather in the corners and seep outward, filling the room. The garden turned ashen grey beneath starlight and moonlight. Twilight was over. True night had begun.
I stepped away from the wall, trying to think of where I might find a lamp and tinder. Bethesda had always tended to fires in the house. At the thought of her a great pit of dread opened inside me. At that moment I tripped against something on the floor.
The thing was small, soft, motionless. I stepped back and slipped on blood. The shape at my feet was almost lost in darkness and mutilated beyond recognition, but I knew in an instant what it was, or had been.
There was a flickering light at the door. I started back, cursing myself for having no weapon. Then I remembered the knife the mute boy had given me, still hidden in the folds of my tunic. I reached for it, searching blindly until I felt the hilt against my palm. I drew out the knife and walked quickly, steadily to the doorway, meeting the lamplight as it emerged from the darkness, slipping behind and seizing its bearer with an arm around her throat.
She shrieked and bit at my forearm. I tried to break free, but her teeth were clamped against the flesh. 'Bethesda,' I pleaded, 'let me go!'
She broke away and spun around, her back to the wall. She reached up to wipe the taste of blood from her mouth. Somehow she had managed to hold the lamp aloft and burning without loosing a drop of oil.
'Why did you do that?' she screamed. She beat her fist against the wall behind her. There was a kind of madness in her eyes. By the: lamplight I saw the bruises on her face and throat. The neck of her gown had been badly torn.
'Bethesda, are you hurt? Are you bleeding?'
She closed her eyes and took a breath. 'Only a little hurt.' She held up her lamp and looked into the room, then made a face so wretched that I thought some new menace had entered the house. But when I followed her gaze to the floor I saw only the broken and blood-matted corpse of her beloved Bast.
I tried to hold her, but Bethesda would not be held. She pulled away with a shiver and hurriedly went from room to room, using the flame from her lamp to light every lamp and candle. When the whole house was alight and she had satisfied herself that no intruders lurked in the darker comers, she bolted the door and went about the house again, closing all the windows.
I watched her in silence. In the wavering light I saw the shambles that had been made of the house: furniture overturned, hangings ripped from the walls, objects smashed and broken. I lowered my eyes, numb from looking at chaos, and found myself studying the trail of blood on the floor, the mangled body of Bast, the writing on the wall. I stepped closer. The letters were of different sizes, many of them misshapen and inverted, but the spelling was correct. It had obviously been made by someone unused to writing, perhaps a complete illiterate reproducing the symbols from a copy. It hurt my eyes to read it:
BE SILENT OR DIE. LET ROMAN JUSTICE WORK IT’S WILL.