Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (18 page)

I turned back to Eco. ‘Three of them, you said. Was there anything to distinguish them besides their cloaks? Tall, short, anything unusual? One of them limped, you say, the leader. Which was his crippled leg, the left or the right?’

The boy thought for a moment, then poked at his left leg. He scrambled up and limped about me in a circle.

‘The left. You’re certain?’

‘Ridiculous!’ the old woman screamed. ‘The stupid boy knows nothing! It was his right leg that was bad, his right!’ The words were out before she could stop them. She slapped a hand over her mouth. A smile of triumph crept over my face, then withered as she gave me a look such as Medusa might have given Perseus. For a moment she stood confused, then she took decisive action. She stormed into the street and seized the handle of the wide door, then stamped back into the shop, pulling it closed behind her in a great arc while Tiro scurried out of her way. ‘We will reopen,’ she shouted to no one in particular, ‘when this rabble has cleared the streets!’ The door closed behind her not with a great boom, but with an equivocal rattle and a thud.

‘His left,’ I said, turning back to the boy. He nodded. A tear ran down his cheek; he dabbed at it angrily with his sleeve. ‘And his hand – which did he use for stabbing? Think!’

Eco seemed to stare into some great depth that loomed beneath the bloodstain at our feet. Slowly, trancelike, he transferred the blade from his right hand to his left. He narrowed his eyes. His left hand gave a jerk, making miniature stabbing motions in the air. He blinked and looked up at me, nodding.

‘Left-handed! Good, left-handed with a game left leg – that should make him easy enough to spot. And his face – did you have a look at his face?’

He shuddered and seemed to be holding back tears. He nodded slowly, gravely, not quite looking me in the eye.

‘A good look? Good enough so that you would recognize him if you were to see him again?’

He gave me a look of pure panic and began scrambling to his feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back, close to the bloodstain. ‘But how could you have seen him so closely? Where were you, in the window of your room?’

He nodded. I glanced up.

‘Too far to get a really good look at a man’s face in the street even in broad daylight. And yet it was dark that night, even if there was a full moon.’

‘Fool! Don’t you understand?’ The voice came from above me, from the window over the shop. The old man had pulled back the shutters and was peering down at us again, talking in a hoarse whisper. ‘It wasn’t that night that he got a good look at the man’s face. They came back again, only a few days later.’

‘And how do you know that?’ I asked, craning my neck.

‘They . . . they came into my shop.’

‘And how did you recognize them? Did
you
see the crime?’

‘Not me. Oh, no, not me.’ The old man looked warily over his shoulder. ‘But there’s nothing that happens in this street day or night that my wife doesn’t see. She saw them that night, standing where I am at this very window. And she knew them when they came back a few days later in broad daylight, the same three – she knew their leader by his limp, and one of the others by the size of him – a big blond giant with a red face. The third had a beard, I think, but I can’t say more than that. The leader was asking questions around the neighbourhood, same as you. Only we didn’t tell them a thing, not a thing, not one word about Polia claiming to have seen the stabbing herself from start to finish, I swear it. Didn’t like the look of them. At least I didn’t tell them anything; only it seems, now that I recall, I had to leave the shop, just for a moment, while the old woman got rid of them – you don’t suppose she went off with her big mouth . . .’

Behind me I heard a strange animal cry. I turned, then ducked as Eco’s knife went flying over my head. The old man’s reflexes were amazingly quick. The knife went whistling towards the open window and struck against slammed shutters instead. The blade landed squarely in the wood, stuck for a long moment, then slipped free and fell to the street with a clatter. I turned and stared at Eco, amazed that a mere boy could have thrown the knife with such strength. He stood hiding his face in his hands, weeping.

‘These people are mad,’ whispered Tiro.

I grabbed Eco’s wrists and pulled his hands from his face. He wrenched his head from side to side, trying to hide his tears. He pulled against my grip. I held him fast.

‘The men came back,’ I said. ‘They came for you. Could they have seen you watching, the night of the murder?’

He wildly shook his head.

‘No. Then they found out from the old woman in the shop. She led them to you. But according to the gossip it was your mother who saw the crime. Did she? Was she with you in the window?’

Again he shook his head. He wept.

‘You were the only one who saw it, then. You and the old woman across the street. But the old woman had the sense to keep herself out of it – and to lead them elsewhere. You told your mother all the details, didn’t you? Just as you’ve told us? And she started putting it out as if she’d seen the crime herself. Am I right?’

He shuddered and sobbed.

‘Wretched,’ I whispered. ‘Wretched. So they came that day looking for her, not you. And they found her in your apartment. You were there?’

He managed to nod.

‘And then what? Threats, bribes?’ I asked, knowing it was something much worse.

The boy wrenched himself from my grip. Sobbing, whining, he began slapping his own face back and forth. Tiro huddled next to me, watching horrified. The boy finally stopped. He stamped his foot and looked me straight in the eye. Gritting his teeth, contorting his face into a mask of hate, he raised both arms. His hands moved slowly, stiffly, as if against his will. He made an obscene gesture, then crumpled his hands into fists as if they had been withered by fire.

They had raped his mother, Polia who had seen nothing, who would have known nothing of the crime if he had not told her, whose only crime was spreading secondhand gossip to an old lady across the street. They had raped her, and Eco had seen it happen.

I looked at Tiro to see if he understood. He covered his mouth and averted his eyes.

The boy suddenly pushed me aside and ran to the knife in the street. He snatched it up and ran back to me, taking my hand in his and pressing my fingers around the hilt. Before I could pay him, before I could make any gesture of comfort or understanding, he ran back into the tenement, pushing aside the gaunt watchman who was stepping out of the doorway for a breath of air.

I looked at the knife in my hand. I sighed and closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy from the heat. ‘For his revenge,’ I whispered. ‘He thinks we bring justice, Tiro.’

XI

We sat out the worst of the afternoon’s heat in a small tavern. I had meant to press on to find the whore Elena – the House of Swans could be only a short distance beyond the scene of the murder – but I lacked the heart. Instead we turned back, trudging up the narrow street until we reached the open square.

The concourse was almost deserted. Shopkeepers had closed their stalls. The heat was so intense that even the vendors with their carts had disappeared. Only a few vagrant children and a dog remained, playing in puddles about the public cistern. They had pushed back the iron cover, and one of the boys was standing dangerously close to the edge. Without even a glance over his shoulder, he hitched up his tunic and began urinating into the hole.

A mosaic of a bunch of red grapes inlaid above the cornerstone of a small tenement advertised a nearby tavern. A sprinkling of purple and white tiles led around the corner and down a short flight of steps. The tavern was a small, musty room, dark and dank and deserted.

The heat had exhausted me beyond speech. After so much walking I should have eaten, but I had no appetite. I ordered water and wine instead, and cajoled Tiro into sharing. I ordered more, and by that time Tiro needed no persuasion. With his tongue loosened and his guard down, I felt an urge to ask him outright about his tryst with the daughter of Sextus Roscius. If only I had! But for once I stifled my curiosity.

Tiro was unused to the wine. For a while he became quite animated, talking about the events of the morning and the previous day, interrupting himself every now and again to say a word of praise for his wise master, while I sat bemused in my chair, only half-listening. Then he abruptly grew silent, staring at his cup with a melancholy look. He took a final sip, put down the cup, leaned back in his chair, and fell fast asleep.

After a while I closed my eyes, and while I never quite slept, I dozed fitfully for what seemed a very long time, opening my eyes occasionally to the unchanging sight of Tiro splayed slack-jawed in the chair across from me, sleeping the absolute sleep of the young and innocent.

The half dreams I dreamed, partly submerged in them, partly aware that I dreamed, were gnarled and uneasy, far from innocence. I sat in the house of Caecilia Metella, interviewing Sextus Roscius; he babbled and muttered, and though he seemed to speak Latin I could hardly make out a word he said. When he rose from his chair I noticed that he wore a heavy cloak, and when he walked towards me it was with a terrible limp, dragging his left leg behind him. I turned away from him, horrified, and ran into the hallway. Corridors branched and merged like passages in a maze. I was lost. I parted a curtain and saw him from the back. Beyond him the young widow was pinned against the wall, naked and weeping as he violently raped her.

But as happens in dreams, what I first saw changed into something else, and I realized with a start that the woman was not the widow; it was Roscius’s own daughter, and when she saw that I watched she was unashamed. Instead she kissed the empty air and flicked her tongue at me.

I opened my eyes and saw Tiro sleeping across the table. A part of me wanted to awaken, but was too weak. My eyes were too heavy, and I lacked the will to keep them open. Or perhaps this was only another part of the dream.

In the storeroom of Caecilia’s house, the man and the woman continued to copulate. I watched them from the doorway, as timid as a boy. The man in the cloak looked over his shoulder. I smiled to myself, for now I expected to see Tiro’s face, flushed with excitement, innocent, embarrassed. Instead I saw Sextus Roscius, leering and transfixed with an unspeakable passion.

I covered my mouth and started back, appalled. Someone tugged at my sleeve. It was the mute boy, his eyes red from weeping, biting his lips to keep himself from simpering. He tried to hand me a knife, but I refused to take it. He shoved me aside angrily, then hurled himself at the copulating figures.

The boy stabbed at them brutally, indiscriminately. They refused to stop, as if the stabbing were a minor bother, not worth the pleasure it would cost them to pull apart and slap the boy aside. I knew somehow that they could not pull apart, that their flesh had in some way become merged and indistinct. Even as they heaved and writhed a pool of blood ran from their mingled bodies. It spread across the floor like a rich red carpet. It slithered beneath my feet. I tried to step forward but was frozen to the spot, unable to move or even to speak, as rigid as a corpse.

I opened my eyes, but it seemed to make no difference. I saw only an inundation of red. I realized that I had not opened my eyes at all and still dreamed against my will. I reached up to push my eyes open with my fingers, but the lids held fast together. I struggled, panting and out of breath, unable to will myself out of the dream.

Then, in an instant, I was awake. My eyes were open. My hands were on the table, trembling. Tiro sat across from me, peacefully napping.

My mouth was as dry as alum. My head felt stuffed with wool. My face and hands were numb. I tried to call for the taverner and found I could hardly speak. It made no difference; the man was dozing himself, sitting on a stool in the corner with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest.

I stood. My limbs were like dry wood. I staggered to the entrance and up the stairs to the alley, around the corner and into the square. The open concourse was blindingly bright and utterly deserted; even the urchins had abandoned it. I made my way to the cistern, knelt beside it and peered into the blackness. The water was too deep to give back any reflection, but I felt the rising coolness on my face. I pulled up the bucket, splashed my face, poured it over my head.