Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (40 page)

Chrestus nodded in agreement.

‘The night of the murder,’ I said, trying to draw them back. ‘You were thrown aside, saved by a word from Magnus, and then you disappeared. Vanished into the night without a shout or a scream for help – don’t deny it, I have a witness who swears to it.’

Felix shook his head. ‘I don’t know what sort of witness you may have, but we didn’t run away, not exactly. We ran down the street a way and then stopped. Chrestus would have kept running, but I held him back.’

Chrestus looked crestfallen. ‘That’s true,’ he said.

‘We stood in the dark and watched them do it. What a fine man he was! What a fine Roman! A slave couldn’t ask for a better master. Never once in thirty years did he beat me, never once! How many slaves can say that?’

‘A terrible sight!’ Chrestus sighed, his fleshy shoulders shivering. ‘I shall never forget how his body quaked while they plunged the daggers into him. How the blood spurted into the air like a fountain. I thought right then that I should run back and throw myself on the street beside him and tell them, “Take my life as well!” I as much as said so, didn’t I, Felix?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Don’t you remember? I said to you, “Now our lives are as good as over. Things will never be the same.” Didn’t I? And wasn’t I right?’ He began to weep softly.

Felix made a face and touched his friend’s arm to comfort him, shrugging at me as if his own tenderness embarrassed him. ‘That’s true. I remember your saying that. Ah, it was a terrible thing, to see it done from start to finish. When it was over, when we knew the master was dead beyond all hope, we finally turned and ran all the way home. We sent a litter for his body, and the next morning I dispatched a messenger to Ameria.’

Suddenly he drew his eyebrows together. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Only something I just now remembered. Something strange. Strange then, and even stranger now that I recall it. When they were done – when there could be no doubt that the poor master was dead – the bearded one started to cut his head off.’

‘What?’

‘Grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back sharp, then started slicing with a very long, very big blade. Like a butcher who’d spent a lifetime doing it. Magnus didn’t see when he started, he was looking up at the windows, I think. But when he looked back, he shouted, told the man to stop it right away! Pushed him back and slapped him square across the face. Had to reach up high to do it.’

‘Slapped Redbeard in the middle of cutting a man’s head off? I think that may be too stupid for me to believe.’

Felix shook his head. ‘You don’t know Magnus if you think that would stop him. When he loses his temper he’d slap Pluto himself and spit in his eye. His hired friend knew him well enough that he didn’t dare slap him back. But why do you think the man did that? Started to cut off the master’s head, I mean?’

‘Habit,’ I said. ‘It’s what they did in the proscriptions, isn’t it? Cut off the head as proof to claim the state’s reward. Redbeard was a professional, so used to cutting off the head as bounty that he automatically began to do the same to Sextus Roscius.’

‘But why did Magnus stop him? What did he care?’ It was Tiro, looking strangely wise in the lamplight. ‘That was the story that they put out, wasn’t it, that Sextus Roscius was proscribed? So why not have the head cut off?’

All three of them stared at me. ‘Because – I don’t know. Because Magnus wanted it to look like a murder, not a proscription? Wanted it to look as if it were done by thieves instead of assassins? Yes, because at that point they hadn’t yet decided to use the false proscription story, nor were they yet planning to accuse Roscius
filius
of parricide. . . .’ The words seemed to make sense as I uttered them, and for an instant I thought I glimpsed the truth. Then it flickered and vanished, just as if one of us had blown out the lamp with a puff of air. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t understand the point of these questions, anyway,’ Tiro said glumly. ‘We knew all this before, from the mute boy.’

‘Little Eco is hardly a competent witness. And his mother would never testify.’

‘But what about Felix or Chrestus? Neither of them could give evidence, unless –’ Tiro shut his mouth.

‘Unless what?’ Chrestus, ignorant of the law, actually looked hopeful. Until I had told them, they hadn’t even known about the trial of Sextus Roscius. The novel idea of giving evidence to a court seemed to charm Chrestus. Tiro, the slave of an advocate, knew better.

‘Unless,’ I said, ‘your new master allows it. And I think we all know that Chrysogonus will never allow it, so that is the end of that,’ I said, knowing that it was hardly the end at all. In the morning I would ask Rufus to arrange for the court to send a formal request to Chrysogonus, asking that his slaves give evidence. It would be his right to refuse, but how would that refusal look? Cicero might just be able to pressure the man into allowing the court to question Felix and Chrestus. After all, they had never actually seen the killers’ faces, and Chrysogonus might not realize how much they knew. And what excuse could Chrysogonus have to refuse evidence to the court, except to conceal his own complicity?

What if he did submit and handed them over? Roman law in its wisdom demanded that any slave giving evidence must be subjected to torture. Evidence given freely by a slave was inadmissible; only torture was an acceptable seal of good faith. How would it be done? I imagined the corpulent Chrestus hanging naked from chains, his buttocks seared by hot irons; gaunt, brittle Felix bound to a chair with his hand in a vice.

‘And afterwards,’ I said, to change the subject, ‘you went to serve your master’s son in Ameria?’

‘Not immediately,’ Felix explained. ‘And we never served young Sextus Roscius. We stayed on at the house near the Circus Flaminius, managing things, taking care of outstanding affairs, helping the steward. We didn’t go to Ameria, not even to assist the master’s funeral rites. And then one day Magnus appeared at the door, claiming the house was his and so were we. It was all there in the papers he carried; what could we do?’

‘That was when the cold weather began,’ Chrestus said, ‘but you’d think it was high summer, the way Magnus carried on. Oh, the old master lived well and enjoyed himself, make no mistake, but he knew that every vice has its place – drinking bouts belong in the tavern, pederasty in the baths, whoring in the brothel, not in the home, and every party has a beginning and an end. But with Magnus there was one vast, continual orgy interrupted by occasional brawls. The place stank of gladiators and gangs, and on some nights he even charged admission. It was harrowing, the people who passed in and out of that house desecrating the master’s memory.’

‘And then came the fire,’ said Felix sourly. ‘Well, what can you expect in a house so given over to drunkenness and neglect? It started in the kitchen and then leaped onto the roof. Magnus was so drunk he could hardly stand; he kept laughing at the flames – I actually saw him fall down from laughing. Which is not to say he was friendly. He kept making us go back into the house to bring out the valuables, threatening to beat us if we shrank back. Two of the slaves died that way, trapped inside when Magnus sent them to fetch his favourite slippers. That tells you how afraid of him we all were, that we were willing to face the flames rather than his wrath. I suppose living under Sextus Roscius had spoiled us all.’

‘Next thing you know,’ Chrestus said, edging forwards, ‘we’re loaded onto carts and trundled up to Ameria, the middle of nowhere, and we end up in the big house having to serve Capito and that wife of his. Out of the fire and into the flood, as they say. You could hardly sleep at night for the sound of them screaming at each other. The woman is mad, I tell you. Not eccentric – Caecilia Metella is eccentric – but stark, raving mad. In the middle of the night I’d find myself summoned to her room and told to count the number of hairs in her hairbrush, and then to separate the grey hairs from the black ones. She wanted an account book kept of every hair she lost! And no time would do for it except the middle of the night, while Capito was asleep in his own room and she sat before her mirror staring at her face. I thought she’d have me counting her wrinkles next.’

He paused for breath, and I thought he was done, but he had only started. ‘And strangest of all, young Sextus Roscius kept appearing, the master’s son. I’d thought he must be dead as well, or else we’d have ended up his slaves; but then I thought maybe he’d sold us and the land for some reason. But that hardly seemed right either, with him living practically like a prisoner or a pauper in a little cramped house on the estate. That was when we finally heard rumours about the proscription story from the other slaves, which made no sense at all. It seemed to me that the world had gone as crazy as Capito’s wife.

‘And strangest of all was the way Sextus Roscius would act. Now the man hardly knew us, granted, for he never spent more than moments in his father’s house on the few occasions he came to Rome, and after all, we weren’t his slaves. But you’d think he might have found some way to draw us aside, just as you’ve done, to ask about his father’s death. We were there when it happened, after all; he must have known that. But whenever he saw us he looked the other way. If he was waiting to see Capito – come to beg him for money, usually – and one of us had some reason to be in the foyer, he’d wait outside instead, even in the cold. As if he were afraid of us! I began to think maybe they’d told him we’d been accomplices in his father’s murder, as if anyone could believe such a thing about two harmless slaves!’

Again something like the truth flickered in the room, like a pale light beside the lamplight, too weak to cast shadows. I shook my head, confused. I felt a hand on my shoulder and gave a start.

‘Gordianus!’ It was Rufus, without the girl. Chrestus and Felix shrank back. ‘Gordianus, I’m going to have to go back to the party. I’ve already sent the girl ahead. Chrysogonus sent a slave to look for us; Metrobius is about to sing. If I’m not there it will only attract their attention.’

‘Yes, very well,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

‘You’ll be able to find your way out?’

‘Of course.’

He looked around the room, uncomfortable amid the tawdry surroundings of the slave quarters. The role of spy didn’t suit him; he was more at home playing the honest young noble in the sunlight of the open Forum. ‘Are you almost done? I think you should try to leave as quickly as you can. Once Metrobius is finished, the entertainment will be over and there’ll be all sorts of strange people wandering about the house. You won’t be safe here.’

‘We’ll hurry,’ I said, squeezing his shoulder and pushing him towards the doorway. ‘Besides,’ I said in a low voice, ‘it can’t have been so very awful, entertaining Aufilia for an hour.’

He twisted the corner of his mouth and shrugged my hand away.

‘But I saw how you kissed her in the pantry.’

He spun around and glared at me, then looked askance at the others in the room and stepped back until they couldn’t see him. He lowered his voice so that I could barely hear. ‘Don’t make a joke of it, Gordianus.’

I stepped into the hallway with him. ‘It’s not a joke,’ I said. ‘I only meant—’

‘I know what you meant. But don’t mistake me. I didn’t kiss her for pleasure. I did it because I had to. I closed my eyes and thought of Cicero.’ He tensed his face and then was suddenly serene again, sedated like all lovers by the act of speaking the beloved’s name. He took a breath, smiled at me oddly, then turned to go. I watched him step through the curtain into the formal hallway. What I saw next made my heart skip a beat.

‘So there you are, young Messalla!’ The voice was golden indeed, like honey, like pearls in amber. He was striding up the hallway towards Rufus, twenty paces away. For just an instant I saw his face and he saw mine. Then the curtain fell.

I heard him through the cloth. ‘Come, Rufus, Aufilia is back at work and you must return to pleasure.’ He laughed a deep, throaty laugh, muscular and ripe like heavy grapes tumbling on flesh. ‘ “Eros makes fools of the old and slaves of the young.” So says sweet Sulla, who certainly should know. But I won’t have you prowling about up here looking for more conquests while old Metrobius warbles his best.’

There was no suspicion in his voice, and to my relief I heard it fade into silence as they retreated down the hallway. But I knew what I had seen when our eyes met. A slight wrinkle had appeared across his smooth and eminently golden brow, and a look of puzzlement sparked in his blue eyes as if he wondered which of his many servants I might be, and if not his slave then whose, and what I was doing upstairs during the party. If my expression in that instant was as transparent as his – if I had looked a tenth as startled and fearful as I felt – Chrysogonus would be sending bodyguards up to investigate as quickly as he could.

I stepped back into the room. ‘Rufus is right. We must hurry. There’s only one other thing I wanted to ask you,’ I said; in fact, it was the only real reason I had for coming. ‘There was a girl, a slave, a whore – young, blonde, pretty. From the House of Swans – Elena.’

I saw by their eyes that they knew her. They exchanged a conspiratorial glance, as if deciding who should speak. Felix cleared his slender throat.

‘Yes, the girl Elena. The master was very fond of her.’

‘How fond?’

There was a strained silence. I stood in the doorway, imagining sounds from the hall. ‘Quickly!’ I said.