Roman blood

'I did. That is, I was the first actually to go down and turn his body over.'

'And how did that come about?' 'Because I heard the scream.' 'Whose scream? Roscius, as he fell?'

'Why, no. Roscia, his daughter. Her bedchamber, the one she shares with her little sister — it's just within the house, the first doorway down the corridor.'

'Explain, please.'

Rufus took a deep breath. It was clearly a struggle to keep his muddled thoughts straight. 'I had already gone to my own bedchamber — the one I always sleep in when I stay over. It's near the centre of the house, about midway between Caecilia's chambers and these. I heard a scream, a girl's scream, followed by loud weeping. I ran from my room and followed it. I found her here on the balcony, shaking and weeping in the moonlight — Roscia Majora. Of course she'd been crying all night, but that hardly explained the scream. When I asked her what was wrong, she shuddered so violently she couldn't speak. Instead she pointed there, to the spot where Roscius's body had come to rest.' He frowned. 'So I suppose it was actually Roscia who first discovered the body, but I was the one who ran down to have a look.'

I glanced over my shoulder at Tiro, who shook his head sadly. His worst suspicions seemed confirmed. 'And just how did Roscia happen to be standing here on the very balcony from which her father had fallen?' I said.

'I asked her that myself,' Rufus said, 'once she was finally able to stop trembling. It seems that she'd just awakened from a bad dream, and she decided to step out onto the balcony for some fresh air. She stood here for a short while, just looking at the full moon, she said, and then she chanced to look down—'

'And just happened to see her father's body, fifty feet or more away, amid all the jumble of leaves and grass and stonework?'

'It wasn't so unlikely,' said Rufus defensively. 'The moon was shining right on the spot, I saw it myself right away when she pointed. And the sight wasn't pretty, the way his limbs and neck were twisted so unnaturally….' He stopped and sucked in a breath, suddenly understanding. 'Oh, Gordianus, you don't think the girl…'

'Of course she did,' said Tiro dully from the shadows behind us. 'The only question is how she managed to lure Sextus out here onto the balcony, though I'm sure that was no challenge to her.'

'That is not the only question,' I objected, though it seemed merely pedantic to consider all the possibilities. 'For example, why did she scream after she pushed him, if indeed she did push him, and especially if it was a premeditated murder? Why did she stay on the balcony until someone could find her?'

Tiro gave a disinterested shrug; his mind was already made up. 'Because she was shocked at the reality of what she'd done. She's only a girl, after all, Gordianus, not a hardened assassin. That's why she was weeping, too, when Rufus came to her; the horror of having actually done it, the relief, the sight of his broken body…. Oh, these Roscii! Cousins and brothers and sons and even daughters all desperate to exterminate their own line. I'm sick of them all! Is it a poison in their blood? Some foul imbalance in their humours?' Tiro shook his head in despair, but when he looked up and I saw his face, half in moonlight, half in shadow, what I read were not thoughts of foulness or horror, but the memory of something irretrievably lost and too painfully sweet to bear.

I turned back to face the abyss, the deep pit of moonlight and shadow into which Sextus Roscius had finally fallen, whether by his own will or by someone else's. I knelt on one knee before the rail and placed my hands on it. I ran my palms aimlessly over the bevelled surface, almost perfectly smooth except for a few tiny grains of stone that stuck to my hands. A thought struck me.

'Tiro, bring one of the lamps. Here, hold it just above the railing, where I can have a closer look.' The light quavered and I looked up to see Tiro blenching at standing so near the edge. 'If you can't hold it steady, then hand it to Rufus.' Tiro surrendered the lamp without hesitation. 'Here, Rufus,' I said, 'follow me and keep the light directly over the railing.'

'Don't scrape your nose,' Rufus said, feeling my excitement and reacting with a joke. 'What are you looking for, anyway?'

We traversed the full length of the rail twice, without success.

I stood up and shrugged. 'It was only an idea. If Sextus Roscius actually did jump by his own choice, it only makes sense that he might first have stepped onto the railing and jumped from there. I thought perhaps there might be some ghost of a footprint in the fine dust. But no.'

I turned my hands over in the lamplight and looked at the powdery dust on the heels of my palms, flecked here and there with a few grains of gravel that adhered to the flesh. I was about to clap my hands clean when I noticed that one speck of debris was quite different from any of the others. It was larger and glossier, with smooth, sharp edges; instead of a bleached grey, it shone dull red in the lamplight. I turned it over with one finger and saw that it was not a piece of stone at all.

'What is it?' whispered Rufus, squinting beside me. 'Is there blood on it?'

'No,' I said, 'but something the colour of dried blood.'

'But this is blood!' said Tiro. While Rufus and I examined the railing, he had taken his own lamp and surveyed the flagstones of the balcony at a safer distance from the edge. At his feet, so insignificant that we had not noticed them before, were a few scattered drops of dark liquid. I knelt and touched them. The beaded drops of blood were, dry at the edges but still moist at the centre.

I stepped back and indicated a straight line with my hand.

"There, on the floor of the balcony, are the drops of blood. There, just before them, is the place on the railing were I found this object.' I held the red fragment carefully between my finger and thumb. 'And directly before that, down below, is the spot where Sextus Roscius struck the stairway.'

'What does it mean?' asked Rufus.

'First tell me this: who else has been on this balcony tonight?' 'Only Roscia and myself, so far as I know. And of course Sextus Roscius.'

'None of the slaves? Or Roscius's wife?' ‘I don't think so.' 'Not even Caecilia?'

Rufus shook his head. 'That I'm sure of. When I brought her the news, she said she wouldn't even come near this wing of the house. She ordered the slaves to bring Sextus's body to her sanctum for purification,'

'I see. Take me to see his body now.'

'But, Gordianus,' Tiro pleaded, 'what have you learned?'

'That Roscia did not murder her father.'

His brow smoothed with relief, then clouded with sudden doubt. 'But if he jumped, how can you explain the blood?'

I placed my finger to my lips. Tiro obediently fell silent, but I wasn't gesturing for him to hush; I was superstitiously kissing the tiny shred of evidence I held between my finger and thumb, and praying that I was not mistaken.

The doors to the sanctum of Caecilia's goddess were tightly shut, but the odour of incense and the wailing of her slave girls penetrated to the corridor without. Ahausarus the eunuch stood guard and sombrely shook his head when we tried to enter. Rufus gripped my arm and pulled me back.