Roman blood

In a perfect house of this sort we should never have seen one another, being consecutive customers of the same whore, but the perfect house of this sort does not exist. Our host at least had the decorum to step between us, nodding first to the stranger as he passed and then spinning back around to me. His wide body made a formidable screen. 'Just another moment,' he said softly, 'while the lady composes herself Like a fine Falerian wine, one wouldn't want to open the bottle too quickly. Haste might spoil the bouquet with bits of cork.'

'Do you really imagine there's anything of Electra's cork left intact?' said one of the girls from the comer of her mouth as she passed behind me. My host made no sign that he heard, but his eyes flashed and his fingers twitched. I could see he was accustomed to using his hands on his whores, but not in front of a paying customer.

He left me for a moment and then returned, smiling unctuously. 'All ready,' he said, and waved me into the corridor.

Electra was as striking as I had remembered, but there was a weariness about her eyes and mouth that cast a shadow on her beauty. She reclined on her couch with one knee raised and her elbow balanced atop it, her head thrown back on the pillows amid the great mass of her dark hair. At first she failed to recognize me, and I felt a pang of disappointment. Then her eyes brightened a bit and she reached up self-consciously as if to compose her hair. I flattered myself that for another man she would not have cared how she looked, and in the next instant I wondered if she pulled the same subtle trick on every man who came to use her.

'You again,' she said, still acting, using a low, sultry voice that she might have used with anyone. And then, as if she suddenly, finally remembered exactly why I had come before and what I had sought, she unmasked her voice and gave me a look of such naked vulnerability that I trembled. 'This time you came alone?'

'Yes.'

'Without your bashful little slave?' A trace of wickedness, easy ' and lilting rather than studied, came back into her voice.

'Not only bashful, but naughty. Or so his master thinks. And too busy to come with me today.' 'But I thought he belonged to you.' 'He doesn't.'

Her face was suddenly naked again. "Then you lied to me.'

'Did I? Only about that.'

She raised her other knee and clasped them both against her breasts as if to hide herself from me. 'Why did you come here today?'

'To see you.'

She laughed and arched one eyebrow. 'And do you like what you see?' Her voice was sultry and false again. It seemed to change back and forth beyond her control, like the closing of a lizard's inner eyelid. She stayed just as she was, but her pose seemed suddenly coy rather than shielded. When I had first met her she had seemed so strong and genuinely lusty, almost indestructible. Today she seemed weak and broken, fragile, old, dreamless. A part of me had been excited at the prospect of seeing her again, alone and at my leisure; but now her beauty only caused me a kind of pain.

She shivered and looked away. The slight motion caused the gown to part across her thigh. Against the pale, sleek flesh there was a slender stripe, red at the edges and purple at the centre, like the mark of a cane or a stiff leather thong. Someone had struck her there, so recently that the bruise was still forming. I remembered the vaguely smiling noble who had left with his nose in the air.

'Did you find Elena?' Electra's voice had changed again. Now it was husky and thick, like smoke. She kept her face averted, but I could see it in the mirror.

'No.'

'But you found out who took her, and where.' 'Yes.'

'Is she all right? In Rome? And the child.. ?' She saw me watching her in the mirror. 'The child died.' 'Ah.' She lowered her eyes. 'At birth. It was a hard birth.'

'I knew it would be. Only a child herself, such slender hips.' Electra shook her head. A tendril of hair fell across her face. Her image, captured just so in the mirror, was suddenly too beautiful to look at.

'Where was this?' she said.

'In a small town. A day or two from Rome.'

'The town where Sextus Roscius came from — Ameria, is that the name?'

'Yes, it was in Ameria.'

'She dreamed of going there. Ah, I think she must have liked that, the fresh air, the animals, and trees.'

I thought of the tale Felix and Chrestus had told me, and felt almost sick. 'Yes, quite a lovely little town.'

'And now? Where is she now?'

'Elena died. Not long after the birth. It was the birth that killed her.'

'Ah, well. She chose it then. She wanted to have his child so badly.' She turned her shoulder to me, making sure I couldn't see her in the mirror. How long had it been since Electra had allowed a man to see her weep? After a moment she turned back and laid her head against the pillows. Her cheeks were dry, but her eyes glistened. Her voice was hard. 'You might have lied to me. Did you consider that?'

'Yes.' Now it was I who lowered my eyes, not out of shame but because I was afraid she would see the whole truth.

'You lied to me before. You lied about the slave boy being yours. So why not this time?'

'Because you deserve the truth.'

'Do I? Am I that awful? Why not mercy instead? You might have told me Elena was happy and alive, with a healthy baby at her breast. How would I have known it was a lie? Instead you told me the truth. What good is truth to me? Truth is like a punishment. Do I really deserve it? Does it give you pleasure?' Tears streamed from her eyes.

'Forgive me,' I said. She turned away and said nothing.

I left the House of Swans, pushing past the grinning whores and tense-lipped, leering customers who lingered in the vestibule. The host veered by, smiling like a grotesque mask from a comedy. In the street I stopped to catch my breath. A moment later he came running after me, shouting and clenching his fists.

'What did you do to her? Why is she crying like that? Crying and refusing to stop. She's too old to cry and get away with it, even with her looks. Her eyes will puff up and she'll be useless for the rest of the day. What sort of man are you, anyway? There's something indecent about you, unnatural. Don't bother to come back. Go to another place. Find another man's girls to play your little games.' He stormed back into the house.

A little way down the road, close enough to have heard everything, stood the cool noble who had left before me, surrounded by a pair of bodyguards and a small retinue; he must have been at least a minor magistrate. The whole company guffawed and grinned as I passed by. Their master gave me a thin, condescending smile, the kind of look a powerful man gives to an inferior to acknowledge that despite the gulf between them the gods have given them the same appetites.

I stopped and stared at him, long and hard enough that he finally stopped smiling. I imagined him broken-jawed, bent over, and bleeding, shocked by an avalanche of pain. One of the guards growled at me like a hound sniffing invisible threats. I clenched my fists inside my tunic, bit my tongue so hard it bled, stared straight ahead, and forced myself to keep walking.

I walked until I longed to stop walking, through crowded squares where I felt a total stranger, past taverns I could not stand to enter. The illusion of invisibility descended on me again, but with it there was no sense of strength or freedom, only emptiness. Rome became a city of endless squalor, shrieking babies, the stench of raw onions and rotted meat, the grime of unwashed paving stones. I watched a legless beggar drag himself across the street while a pack of children followed behind, pelting him with pebbles and taunting him with insults.