Roman Blood (33 page)

What he said to her in that green arbor, I never knew. When the time came that I might have asked him, I did not, and he never volunteered it. Perhaps Cicero interrogated him later and learned the details, but it seems unlikely. Sometimes even a slave may possess a secret, though the world allows him to possess nothing else.

I waited only a short while, and not as long as I intended; with each passing instant I imagined the girl fleeing through the park's farther exit, until I could no longer stand still. There would never be a good time to get the truth from her, but this was the best opportunity I could hope for.

The little park was shaded and cool, but choked with dust. Dust clung to the parched leaves of the roses and the ivy that crept up the walls.

Dust rose underfoot where the grass had withered and worn thin. Twigs snapped and leaves crackled as I pushed my way through; they heard me coming, though I stepped as softly as I could. I glimpsed them through the tangle and in the next moment found them sitting together on a low stone bench. The girl stared up at me with the eyes of a frightened animal. She would have bolted were it not for Tiro's hand closed fast around her wrist.

" W h o are y o u ? " She glared at me and grimaced as she tried to pull her hand free. She looked at Tiro, but he would not look back, staring instead into the tangled leaves.

She sat absolutely still then, but I could see the panic and the furious calculation behind her eyes. "I'll scream," she said quietly. " I f no one else hears, the guards around Caecilia's house will. They'll come if they hear me screaming."

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" N o , " I said, taking a step back and speaking softly to calm her.

"You're not going to scream. You're going to talk."

" W h o are y o u ? "

" Y o u know who I a m . "

" Y e s , I do. You're the one they call the Finder."

"That's right. And you have been found, Roscia Majora."

She chewed her lip and narrowed her eyes. For such a pretty girl it was remarkable how unpleasant she could make her face. "I don't know what you mean. So you found me sitting with this slave—he's Cicero's slave, isn't he? He lured me here, he told me he had a message from his master about my father—"

She spoke not in the tentative tone of one fabricating a lie for later use, but as if it were the truth she spoke even as she invented it. I could see she had much experience in lying. Tiro still would not look at her.

"Please," he whispered. "Gordianus, can I go n o w ? "

"Absolutely not. I'll need you here to tell me when she's lying. Besides, you're my witness. Leave me alone with her and she's likely to invent sordid stories about my conduct."

"A slave can't be a witness," she snapped.

" O f course he can. I suppose they don't teach Roman law to farmers'

daughters in Ameria, do they? A slave is a perfectly reliable witness, so long as his testimony is obtained under torture. Indeed, the law requires that a slave bearing witness
must
be tortured. So I hope you won't scream and begin inventing trouble, Roscia Majora. Even if what you feel for Tiro is no more than contempt, I don't think you'd want to be responsible for having him racked and burned with irons."

She glared at me. "A monster, that's what you are. Just like the rest.

I despise all of you."

The answer came effortlessly to my lips, but I paused for a long moment before saying it, knowing that after it was spoken there would be no turning back. " B u t your father most of all."

"I don't know what you mean." There was a catch in her breath, and the anger that shielded her face abruptly vanished to reveal the pain beneath. She was a child after all, despite her craftiness. She fumbled about, trying to cover herself with that bitter shield and only half succeeding, so that when she spoke again it was as if she were half-naked, brazenly hostile, but with her vulnerability painfully exposed.

"What is it that you want?" she whispered harshly. " W h y did you 216

come here? Why can't you just leave us alone? Tell him, Tiro." She reached for the arm that held her wrist and tenderly caressed it, glancing at Tiro and then casting her eyes demurely to the ground. The gesture seemed both calculating and sincere, manipulative and yet truly longing for tenderness in return. Tiro blushed to the roots of his hair. From the whiteness of his knuckles and the sudden grimace on Roscia's face, I saw that he was squeezing her wrist painfully tight, perhaps not even knowing it.

"Tell him, Tiro," she gasped, and no man could have said for certain whether the tears in her voice were genuine or not.

"Tiro has already told me enough." I looked straight at her but shut my eyes to the pain on her face. I made my voice cold and hard. " W h o m do you meet when you leave Caecilia's house—I mean, besides Tiro? Is it here on this spot that you give your father's secrets to the wolves who want to see him flayed alive? Tell me, you foolish child! What sort of bribe could convince you to betray your own flesh?"

" M y own flesh!" she shrieked. "Betray my own flesh? I have no flesh!

This is my father's flesh, this!" She tore her hand from Tiro's grasp, pushed up her sleeve and pinched a handful of the flesh on her arm. "This flesh, this is his flesh!" she said again, pulling up the hem of her gown to show me her bare white legs, pinching at the taut flesh as if she could tear it from the bone. " A n d this, and this! Not mine, but his!" she shouted, tearing at herself, at her cheeks and hands and hair. When she pulled at the neck of her gown to bare her breasts, Tiro stopped her. He would have embraced her, but she slapped him away.

" D o you understand?" She shook as if she wept, but no tears came from her sparkling, feverish eyes.

" Y e s , " I said. Tiro sat beside her, shaking his head, still confused.

" D o you really understand?" A single tear sprang from one eye and threaded its way down her cheek.

I swallowed and slowly nodded. "When did it begin?"

"When I was Minora's age. That's w h y — " Suddenly she sobbed and could not speak.

"Minora—the little one, your sister?"

She nodded. Tiro at last understood. His lips quivered. His eyes grew dark.

" S o this is your revenge—to help his enemies however you can."

"Liar! You said you understood! Not revenge—Minora . . ."

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" T o save your sister from him, then."

She nodded, turning her face in shame. Tiro watched her with a look of utter helplessness, moving his hands as if to touch her but afraid to.

I could not bear to watch them both at once and turned my face to the empty, endlessly burning sky above.

A breeze wafted through the park, causing the leaves to hiss and then subside. Somewhere far away a woman shouted, and then all was quiet.

Deep within the silence one could still make out the distant murmur of the city below. A single bird flew high overhead and bisected the heavens.

" H o w did they come to you? How did they k n o w ? "

"A man . . . it was here . . . one day." She no longer sobbed, but her voice was thin and broken. " I ' v e come here every afternoon since we came to the city. It's the only place that reminds me of home, of the country. One day a man came—they must have been watching Caecilia's house, they knew I was his daughter. He scared me at first. Then we talked. Gossip, he called it, trying to make it sound innocent when he started talking about my father, as if he were just a curious neighbor. He must have thought he was so subtle, or else he thought I was an idiot, the way he started asking questions. He offered me a stupid little necklace, the kind of thing Caecilia would throw out with the trash. I told him to put it away and stop insulting me. I told him I wasn't stupid and I knew just what he wanted. Oh, no, no, he says, and put on such a show I wanted to spit in his face. I told him to stop it, just to stop it! I knew what he wanted. I told him I knew he came from old Capito or Magnus, and he acted as if he'd never heard of them. I don't care, I told him. I know what you want. And I'll help you however I can. Finally he got it through his head. You should have seen his face."

I stared into the ivy above her head, into the dense, dust-choked darkness, the domain of wasps and snails and the myriad smaller forms of life devouring and redevouring one another. " A n d you still come here every afternoon."

" Y e s . "

" A n d the same man always comes."

" Y e s . And then I send him away, so I can be alone."

"And you tell him everything."

"Everything. What my father ate for breakfast. What my father said to my mother in their bed last night while I listened at the door. Every time Cicero or Rufus visits and what they say."

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"And all the little secrets you can worm out of T i r o ? "

She hesitated for just an instant. " Y e s , that t o o . "

"Such as my name, and the reasons Cicero hired m e ? "

" Y e s . "

"Such as the fact that I asked Cicero to hire a guard for my house?"

" O h , yes. That was just yesterday. He questioned me very closely about that. He wanted to know very precisely what Tiro had told me, the exact details."

" A n d of course you're very good at getting the exact details and remembering them."

She looked straight at me. Her face had grown hard again. " Y e s . Very good. I forget nothing.
Nothing."

I shook my head. " B u t what can you gain from it? What about your own life? What future can you have without your father?"

" N o worse than the past, no more horrible than all the years he made me . . . all the years I was his . . . ."

Tiro again tried to comfort her, and again she pushed him away.

"But even if you hate him with such a murderous hatred, what life will you have, you and your mother and little Minora, if this thing runs its course? With no one to turn to, reduced to beggars—"

"We're beggars now."

"But your father may be acquitted. If that happens, there's a chance we can restore his estates."

She looked at me hard, considering what I said, weighing it while her face showed no expression. Then she delivered her judgment. " I t makes no difference. If you offered me the choice of doing what I've done, or going back to the way things were before, then I'm still not sorry for it.

I'd do it all again. I would betray him in every way I could. I would do anything to help his enemies put him to death. Already he's begun to move on her. I can see from the way he watches her when my mother leaves the room. The look in his eyes—sometimes he looks at Minora, and then at me, and he smiles. Can you imagine? He smiles to show me that he knows I understand. He smiles to remind me of all the times he's taken his pleasure with me. He smiles, thinking of all the pleasure over all the years that he could take from Minora. Even now, with his life almost over, he still thinks about it. Perhaps it's all he thinks about. So far I've kept her away from him—by guile, by lying; once I even threatened him with a knife. But do you know what I think? If they condemn 219

him to death, it's the last thing he'll manage to do. Even if he has to do it in front of his executioners, he'll find some way to rip off her clothes and put himself inside her."

She shivered and swayed as if she might faint. In her helplessness she allowed Tiro to embrace her shoulders gently. Her voice was distant and hollow, as if it came from the moon. " H e smiles because a part of him still believes they'll never kill him. He thinks he'll live forever, and if that's true then there's no way I can hope to stop him."

I shook my head. " Y o u hate him so much you don't care whom your treachery hurts or how many innocent men you destroy. Twice now I might have been killed, because of you."

She blanched, but only for an instant. " N o man who helps my father is innocent," she said dully. Tiro's embrace began to loosen.

" A n d any man is worthy of your body if he can be of use to y o u ? "

" Y e s ! Yes, and I have no shame for it! My father has every right to me, so the law says. I'm just a girl, I'm nothing, I'm the dirt beneath his fingernails, hardly better than a slave. What weapons do I have? What can I use to protect Minora? Only my body. Only my wits. So I use them."

"Even if your treachery means my death?"

" Y e s ! If that's the price—if others have to die." She began to cry again, realizing what she had said. "Though I never thought, I never knew. It's only him I hate."

" A n d whom do you love, Roscia Majora?"

She struggled to quiet her weeping. "Minora," she whispered.

" A n d no one else?"

" N o o n e . "

"What about the boy in Ameria, Lucius Megarus?"

" H o w do you know about him?"

" A n d Lucius's father, the good farmer Titus, your father's best friend in the world?"

"That's a lie," she snapped. "Nothing happened with him."

" Y o u mean you offered yourself, and he refused you." I was almost as surprised as Tiro when her silence admitted the truth. He pulled away from her entirely. She seemed not to notice.

" W h o else has known your favors, Roscia Majora? Other slaves in Caecilia's household, in return for spying on your father? The spy who meets you here, this creature of the enemy, what about him? What happens after you give him the information he wants?"

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" D o n ' t be stupid," she said dully. She was no longer weeping now, but sullen.

I sighed. "Tiro means nothing to you, does h e ? "

"Nothing," she said.

" H e was only a tool that you used?"

She looked into my eyes. " Y e s , " she said. "Nothing more than that.

A slave. A foolish boy. A tool." She began to look at him, then turned away.

" P l e a s e — " Tiro began.

" Y e s , " I said. " Y o u can go now, Tiro. We'll both go. There's nothing more to say."

He did not attempt to touch her again, nor did he look at her. We stepped between the tangled leaves until we emerged into the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Tiro shook his head, kicking at the dirt.

"Gordianus, forgive m e , " he began, but I cut him short.