I felt a pang of hunger and was ready to be home again. I looked around, not recognizing my surroundings for a moment and then realized I had somehow ended up at the distant mouth of the Narrows. I had not meant to walk so far or to come anywhere near the place. Perhaps there is a god whose guiding hand can fall so lightly on a man's shoulder that he never knows it.

I turned towards home and began to walk.

I passed no one on the path, but every now and again I heard from windows above the sound of women calling their families to supper. The world seemed peaceful and content, until I heard the stamping of feet behind me.

Many feet, pounding against the paving stones, together with high-pitched shouts that echoed down the Narrows and the clatter of sticks being dragged against the uneven walls. For a moment I couldn't tell whether the noise came from behind or before me, so strange was the echo. It seemed to draw closer and closer, now from the front, now from the back, as if I had been surrounded on both sides by a shrieking mob.

Sulla lied, I thought. My house on the hill is in flames. Bethesda has been raped and murdered. Now his hired rabble have trapped me in the Narrows. They will beat me with sticks. They will tear my body apart. Gordianus the Finder will vanish from the earth and no one will know or care except his enemies, who will soon forget.

The noise became shrill and deafening. It came from behind me. The voices I heard were not the voices of men, but of boys. At that moment they appeared around a bend in the Narrows, smiling, screaming, laughing, and waving sticks, tripping over one another as they careened against the walls. They were chasing another boy, smaller than the rest and dressed in a blur of filthy rags, who ran headlong against me and burrowed into my tunic as if I were a tower where he might hide fiimself.

His pursuers skittered to a halt, tripping against one another, still screaming and laughing and beating their sticks against the walls. 'He's ours!' one of them yelled at me in a shrill voice. 'Hasn't got a family hasn't got a tongue!'

'His own mother left him,' yelled another. 'He's no better than a slave. Give him back! We were just having some fun with him.'

'Fun!' cried the first. 'Especially the noises he makes! Hit him hard until he tries to cry "stop," and only a croak comes out!'

I looked down at the squirming mass of rags and sinew in my arms. The child looked up at me, fearful, doubting, suddenly jubilant when he recognized me. It was the mute boy, Eco, abandoned by the widow Polia.

I looked up at the shrill, screaming gang of boys. Something monstrous must have passed across my face; the nearest of them backed away and blanched as I gently thrust Eco aside. Some of the boys looked frightened. Others looked surly and ready for a fight.

I reached into my tunic, where I had never ceased to carry his knife, day by day, since the hour he had given it to me. He thinks we bring justice, Tiro. I pulled it out. The boys opened their eyes wide and tripped over one another in a rush to escape. I heard them for a long time, laughing, screaming, and raking their sticks against the walls as they retreated.

Eco reached up, grasping for the handle. I let him take it. There were still a few flecks of Mallius Glaucia's blood on the blade. Eco saw them and squealed with satisfaction.

He looked up at me mquiringly with a grimace on his dirty face as he pantomimed stabbing the air. I nodded my head.

'Yes,' I whispered, 'your revenge. With your dagger and my own hand I avenged you.' He stared at the blade and parted his lips in a thrill of rapture.

Mallius Glaucia had been one of the men who raped his mother; now Glaucia was dead by the mute boy's blade. What matter that I would never have killed Glaucia had I any other choice, not even for the boy's sake? What matter that Glaucia — giant, lumbering, blood-mad Glaucia — was only a dwarf among giants compared to the Roscii? Or that the Roscii were only children in the lap of a man like Chrysogonus? Or that Chrysogonus was but a toy for Lucius Sulla? Or that Sulla was only an unravelled thread in the gold and blood-red scheme that had been woven for centuries by families like the Metelli, who by their tireless plotting could rightfully claim to have made Rome everything it was today? In their Republic even a tongueless beggar boy could have pretensions to Roman dignity, and the sight of a petty criminal's blood on his very own blade made him squeal with excitement. Had I delivered the head of Sulla on a platter, the child could not have been more pleased.

I reached into my purse and offered him a coin, but he ignored it, clasping his knife with both hands and dancing in a circle around it. I slipped the coin back into my purse and turned away.

I had walked only a few steps before I stopped and looked back. The boy stood as still as a statue, clutching his dagger and looking after me with solemn eyes. We stared at each other for a long moment. Finally I extended my hand, and Eco came running.

We walked through the Narrows hand in hand, down the crowded Subura Way and up the narrow path. When I stepped into my house, I shouted to Bethesda that there would be another mouth to feed.

Author's note

Readers of historical novels who habitually read the afterword ahead of the text should know that Roman Blood is also a mystery; certain matters germane to its solution are discussed here, if only obliquely. Caveat lector.

Our chief sources for the life of Sulla are Plutarch's biography, which is typically full of gossip, scandal, and hocus pocus — in other words, a good read — and Sallust's Bellum Iugurthinum Jugurthine War), which recounts Sulla's African exploits with Kiplingesque verve. There are also numerous references in the works of contemporary Republican writers, especially Cicero, who seems never to have tired of holding up Sulla as a symbol of vice against whom the standard-bearer of virtue (Cicero) could be compared. Sulla's own autobiography is lost, a cause for some regret. Given what we know of his character, it seems unlikely that his memoirs could have been as spellbinding as those of Caesar or as unconsciously revealing as those of Cicero, but they must surely have been more lively and more literate than those of our own political leaders.

For the trial of Sextus Roscius, we have the text of Cicero's defence. It is a long document, and to the extent that I have compressed and adapted it, I do not feel I have taken any undue liberties. Historians agree that Cicero's original, spoken orations by no means corresponded exactly to the published versions handed down to us, which Cicero (and Tiro) revised and embellished after the fact, often for political purposes. There is considerable doubt, for example, that certain satirical jabs at Sulla found in the written text of the Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino would actually have been spoken from the Rostra while the dictator was still alive. However, certain of Cicero's rhetorical flourishes, as reproduced here, are absolutely authentic; I would never have dared to invent the melodramatic 'by Hercules!' to which Cicero resorted more frequently in his own writings than I have allowed him to do in Roman Blood.

The known details of the murder case are all supplied by Cicero; the prosecutor's speech has not survived and its main points can only be inferred from Cicero's rebuttals. In drawing certain conclusions about innocence and guilt that go beyond the judgment of the original court, I have gone out on a limb, but not, I think, unreasonably far. Cicero was not above defending a guilty client; he could take considerable pride in doing so and could boast, as he did after the trial of Cluentius, of having thrown dust in the judges' eyes. Curiously, he speaks on the issue of defending guilty men in his treatise De Officiis (On Duties), and almost immediately (consciously or unconsciously) brings up the matter of Sextus Roscius.