Roman Blood by Steven Saylor

Cicero.
    " I ' m not sure. Rufus?"
    " N o t long. Twenty days, perhaps; he wasn't here any earlier than the 64

    Nones of April, I'm sure. I visit her often, but I didn't even know he was here until the guards were posted and Caecilia felt she had to explain.
    Before that she made no effort to introduce him. I don't think she cares for him very much, and of course his wife is so very common."
    " A n d what was he doing here in the city if he loves the countryside so m u c h ? "
    Rufus shrugged. " I ' m not sure about that either, and I don't think Caecilia knows for certain. He and his family simply showed up on her doorstep one afternoon, pleading for admittance. I doubt she had ever met him before, but of course when she realized he was Sextus's son she opened her house immediately. It seems this trouble over the old man's death has been brewing for some time, beginning back in Ameria. I think they may have run him out of the village; he showed up in Rome with practically nothing, not even a household slave. Ask him who's caring for his farms back in Ameria and he'll tell you that most of them were sold, and some cousins are running the rest. Ask him to be specific and he throws one of his fits. Personally I think Hortensius dropped the case out of sheer frustration."
    Ahausarus made a show of admitting us with a flourish through a final curtain. "Sextus Roscius, the son of Sextus Roscius," he said, bowing his head toward the figure who sat in the center of the room, "a much-esteemed client of my mistress. I bring visitors," he said, making a vaguely dismissive gesture in our direction. " T h e young Messalla, and Cicero, the advocate, whom you have met before. And another, called Gordianus." Tiro he ignored, of course, as he also ignored the woman who sat sewing cross-legged on the floor in one corner, and the two girls who knelt beneath the skylight playing some sort of game.
    Ahausarus withdrew. Rufus stepped forward. " Y o u look better today, Sextus Roscius."
    The man gave a faint nod.
    "Perhaps you'll have more to say this afternoon. Cicero needs to begin preparing his defense—your trial is only eight days away. That's why Gordianus has come with us. They call him the Finder. He is skilled at finding the truth."
    "A magician?" T w o baleful eyes glared up at me.
    " N o , " said Rufus. " A n investigator. My brother Hortensius often makes use of his services."
    The baleful eyes turned on Rufus. "Hortensius—the coward who 65

    turned tail and ran? What good can any friends of Hortensius do m e ? "
    Rufus's pale, freckled face turned the color of cherries. He opened his mouth, but I raised my hand to silence him. "Tell me something," I said in a loud voice. Cicero wrinkled his brow and shook his head, but I waved him back. "Tell me now, before we go any further. Sextus Roscius of Ameria: Did you murder or did you in any way cause the murder of your father?"
    I stood over him, daring him by my very posture to look up at me, which he did. What I saw was a simple face, such as Roman politicians delight in extolling, a face darkened by sun, chapped by wind, weathered by time. Roscius might be a rich farmer, but he was a farmer nonetheless. No man can rule over peasants without acquiring the look of a peasant; no man can raise crops out of the earth, even if he uses slaves to do it, without acquiring a layer of dirt beneath his fingernails.
    There was an uncouthness about Sextus Roscius, a rough-hewn, unpolished state, a quality of inertness as blank and immovable as granite.
    This was the son left behind in the countryside, to whip the backs of stubborn slaves and see the oxen pulled from ditches, while pretty young Gaius grew up a pampered city boy with city ways in the house of their pleasure-loving father.
    I searched his eyes for resentment, bitterness, jealousy, avarice. I saw none of these. Instead I saw the eyes of an animal with one foot caught in a trap who hears the noise of hunters approaching.
    Roscius finally