Roman blood

'Nor do I. It's merely an incidental detail.' Perhaps it was the wine warming my blood, or the fresh breeze off the hillside; suddenly I felt fully awake and alert. I stared at the light from Capito's house. It wavered on the rising ripples of warm air and seemed to stare back at me like a baleful eye. 'Let's go to last September, then. Sextus Roscius is murdered in Rome. Witnesses see the chief perpetrator, a strong man in black robes with a lame left leg.',

'Magnus, without a doubt!'

'He appears to know his victim. He is also left-handed, and quite strong.' 'Magnus, again.'

'The assassin is accompanied by two other thugs. One is a blond giant.'

'Mallius Glaucia.'

'Yes. The other — who knows? The shopkeeper says he had a beard. The widow Polia could identify them all, but she'll never-be persuaded to testify. At any rate, it's Glaucia who arrives very early the next morning to give the news to Capito, carrying with him a bloody knife.'

'What? That's a detail I haven't heard before.'

'It comes from the taverner in Narnia.'

'Ah, the one with the blind father. They're both completely daft. Weak blood.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. The taverner tells me that Glaucia took the news straight to Capito. Who was the first to tell Sextus Roscius of his father's death?' I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

Titus nodded. 'Yes, that was me. I heard it eariy that morning at the common well in Ameria. When I saw Sextus that afternoon, I felt sure he knew already. But when I offered him my grief, the look on his face — well, it was a strange look. I couldn't call it grief; you must know there was little love between them. Dread, that's what I saw in his eyes.'

'And surprise? Shock?'

'Not exactly. Confusion and fear.'

'So. The next day a more official messenger arrives, sent by the old man's household in Rome.'

Titus nodded. 'And the day after that the remains of the dead man arrived. The Roscii are buried on a little hill beyond the villa; you can see the stelae from here on a clear day. Sextus buried his father on the eighth day and then began the seven days of mourning. Sextus never finishedthem.'

‘Why?'

'Because within that time the soldiers arrived. They must have come from Volaterrae, up north, where Sulla was campaigning against the last Marian remnants in Etruria. Anyway, the soldiers arrived and made a public announcement in the town square that Sextus Roscius the elder had been declared an enemy of the state and that his death in Rome had been a legal execution at the behest of our esteemed Sulla. His entire estate was forfeit. Everything was to be auctioned — lands, houses, jewellery, slaves. The date and the place were announced, somewhere in Rome. 'And how did young Sextus react?'

'No one knows. He went into seclusion at his villa, refusing to leave the house and seeing no visitors. All this might be quite proper for a man in mourning, but Sextus stood to lose everything. People began saying that perhaps it was true that his father had been proscribed. Who knows what the old man had been doing down in Rome? Perhaps he was a Marian spy, perhaps he had been found out in some plot to assassinate Sulla.'

'But the proscriptions legally ended on the first of June. Roscius was killed in September.'

Titus shrugged. 'You talk like an advocate. If Sulla wanted the man dead, why shouldn't it be legal, so long as the dictator declared it so?'

"Was there much interest in the auction?'

'Everyone knows they're fixed. Why bother? Some friend of Sulla's would end up paying a pittance for it all, and anyone else who cared to bid would be escorted from the hall. Believe me, we were all surprised when Magnus and a band of thugs from Rome showed up at Sextus's door with some sort of official writ, telling him to surrender all his property and vacate at once.'

'So he was pushed aside as easily as that?'

"There was no one to see what actually happened, except the slaves, of course. People love to embellish. Some say that Magnus came upon him burning myrrh at his father's grave, slapped the censer from his hands, and bullied him from the shrine at spear point. Others say he ripped the clothes from Sextus's back and chased him into the road naked, setting hounds after him. I never heard either tale from Sextus; he refused to speak of it, and I wouldn't press his shame.

'In any case, Sextus and his family spent one night in the home of a merchant friend in Ameria, and the next morning Capito moved into the villa. You can imagine the eyebrows that were lifted at that. Not everyone was displeased; Sextus has his enemies and Capito his friends in this valley. Sextus goes directly to Capito; again, no one was there to witness it. In the end, Capito allows Sextus back onto the property, making him stay in a little house at one comer of the estate where they usually put up seasonal labourers at harvest time.' 'And that was the end of it?'

'Not quite. I called a meeting of the Amerian town council and told them we had to do something. It took considerable persuasion, believe me, to get some of those old bones to make a decision. And all the while Capito was glaring at me from across the table — oh, yes, Capito sits on our esteemed town council. Finally it was decided that we should protest against the proscription of Sextus Roscius, to attempt to clear his name and see that his property was restored to his son. Capito went along with everything. Sulla was still encamped at Volaterrae; a delegation of ten men was sent to plead our case — myself, Capito, and eight others.'

'And what did Sulla say?'

'We never saw him. First we were made to wait. Five days they kept us waiting, as if we were barbarians asking for favours, and not Roman citizens petitioning the state. Everyone was impatient and grumbling; they would have dropped it all and come home right then if I hadn't shamed them into seeing it through. At last we were allowed to see not Sulla, but Sulla's deputy, an Egyptian called Chrysogonus. You've heard of him?' Titus asked, seeing the look that crossed my face.

'Oh, yes. A young man, they say, of natural charm and great handsomeness, and the intelligence and ambition to turn them to his utmost advantage. He started as a slave in Sulla's household, toiling in the gardens. But Sulla has an eye for beauty and doesn't like to see it wasted on drudgery. Chrysogonus became the old man's favourite. This was some years ago, when Sulla's first wife was still alive. Sulla eventually sated himself with the slave's body and rewarded him with freedom, riches, and a high place in his retinue.'

Titus snorted. 'I wondered what the story was. All we were told was that this Chrysogonus was a powerful man who had access to Sulla's ear. I told them we wanted to see the dictator himself, but all the secretaries and adjutants shook their heads as if I were a child and said we'd be much better off to win the sympathy of this Chrysogonus first, who would then put the case before Sulla on our behalf'

'And did he?'

Titus looked at me ruefully. 'It went like this: we finally won our audience and were ushered standing into the presence of his Goldenness, who sat staring at the ceiling as if someone had struck him in the forehead with a hammer. Finally he condescended to blink his blue eyes and favour us with a fleeting glance. And then he smiled. I swear, you've never seen such a smile; as if Apollo himself had come down to earth. There was something aloof in it, but not cold. It was more like he was sorry for us, and sad, the way you might imagine a god would be sad to look at mere mortals.

'He nodded. He inclined his head. He fixed his blue eyes on you and you had the feeling that a superior being was doing you a very great favour simply to acknowledge your existence. He listened to our petition and after that every man said his piece, except Capito, who kept in the back as stiff and silent as a stone. And then Chrysogonus stood up from his chair and threw back his shoulders, and he pushed a lock of golden hair from his forehead and put a finger to his lips, as if he were thinking hard; and it was almost embarrassing to be a mere grubby mortal presuming to share the same room with such a perfect specimen of manhood.