'I'm glad to hear it,' sneered Romulus.
'Eh?' The first signs of fear appeared in Gemellus' face. 'Who are you? What do you want?' he breathed.
Drawing his pugio, Romulus smiled mirthlessly. 'Nothing much,' he growled.
Gemellus' mouth opened in horror and he tried to slam the door, but Romulus wedged a foot in the frame, stopping him. They glared at each other for a moment before, with a quick movement, Romulus rested his dagger on the edge of Gemellus' left eye socket. 'Don't you remember me?'
The petrified merchant let the door fall open. 'No,' he whispered. 'Never seen you in my life.'
'Look again,' Romulus advised, moving the blade a hairsbreadth closer to Gemellus' eye.
Panting with fear, Gemellus studied the brawny off-duty soldier before him. Black-haired, handsome, with blue eyes and an aquiline nose, he had a Mithraic tattoo on his upper right arm. Still he didn't twig. 'Did you work for me once?'
'Oh, yes!' Romulus laughed. 'From dawn till dusk, seven days a week.' Confused, Gemellus just stood there and Romulus grew impatient. He pointed the dagger at himself. 'Look, you fool! You owned me, and my mother and twin sister.'
The merchant gaped with disbelief. 'Romulus?'
'Yes,' he replied from between clenched jaws. 'The very same.'
Gemellus' face went grey with terror. He stumbled back a step, looking as if he'd seen a ghost. ''One day there will be a knock on your door,'' he muttered.
'What did you say?'
The merchant had gone into a daze. ''Who stands outside? A soldier, perhaps?''
'You're right there, shitbag. First I was a gladiator, but now I'm a legionary,' snarled Romulus, grabbing Gemellus by the front of his tunic and dragging him out into the alley. The merchant wailed with fear as Romulus slammed him up against the wall. 'This is just the start,' he hissed, carefully drawing his pugio along Gemellus' left cheek. The merchant screamed as a thin line of blood ran down his face from the wound. Romulus smiled at him. 'Time for you to pay your oldest debts.' His voice dripped with sarcasm. 'With your miserable stinking life.'
Gemellus began to sob. 'Please,' he said. 'Don't hurt me.'
Romulus grabbed the merchant's chin, forcing Gemellus to look at him. 'I'm going to slice you into little pieces for what you did to Juba and my family,' he promised. 'But before I do, you'll tell me exactly what happened to my mother and Fabiola.'
Fat tears of self-pity welled up in Gemellus' eyes and spilled down his haggard cheeks, mixing with the blood from Romulus' knife cut.
'Speak!' shouted Romulus, spittle flying from his lips. 'Where did Fabiola end up?'
'I sold her to the Lupanar,' Gemellus finally admitted.
His casual manner stung Romulus to the quick. It was delivered in the same way as if he were selling an ox to the market. Quickly Romulus placed the tip of his pugio over the merchant's chest. Whimpering, Gemellus closed his eyes. With great effort, Romulus restrained himself from slipping the blade between Gemellus' ribs and into his cold-blooded heart. Patience, he thought. The merchant was going nowhere, and after years of living in the dark about his family, this was his chance to find out so much. 'Go on.'
His eyes shut tight, Gemellus shook his head. 'A few years back, I heard a rumour that she'd been bought by Decimus Brutus, one of Caesar's right-hand men. Turned out later it was true.'
Romulus mentally noted the name for future reference. Perhaps that was the man he'd seen with Fabiola in Alexandria. Thanks to Tarquinius, he already knew that his mother was dead, but he wanted to hear it from the merchant himself. 'And Velvinna?' He pricked Gemellus with the pugio. 'Look at me!'
Gemellus' piggy eyes actually looked guilty. 'She went to the salt mines.'
'How much did you get for her?' Romulus shot back.
The merchant shrugged. 'I can't remember.'
Another poke with the dagger, harder this time.
Gemellus squawked. 'Two, maybe three hundred sestertii?'
It was a fraction of what a healthy slave would fetch on the block. Blind fury consumed Romulus. The idea that a living, breathing person — his mother — could be condemned to die in such a miserable way, and for so little, was too much to bear. 'You filthy bastard,' he hissed, slicing Gemellus' other cheek open from ear to jawbone. 'Meant nothing to you, did we? Just pieces of meat to fuck, to buy or to sell.'
Gemellus clutched at his ruined face, his chest heaving with loud sobs.
'Answer me!' Romulus roared. 'Why did you do it?'
The bleeding merchant fell sobbing to his knees and clung to Romulus' caligae like a supplicant at a shrine. 'Forgive me,' he whimpered. 'I am an evil man.'
Already Romulus' feet and sandals were covered in blood. Disgusted, he kicked Gemellus away. There would never be a satisfactory reason why the merchant had treated them all so cruelly. 'Stand up, you whoreson.' There was no response, so he booted Gemellus again. 'Up, I said. It's time for you to feel some real pain. Before I send you to Hades.'
'No,' wailed Gemellus. 'Please.' A circle of wet appeared on the ground beneath him as he lost control of his bladder. 'I'm an old man.'
'Sewer rat, more like,' spat Romulus. 'Don't like the rough treatment yourself, do you?' The merchant did not answer, and Romulus knew he was going to have to stab him in the back. Gemellus was too afraid to face his own death. Yet he — Romulus — was unprepared to kill even a monster like this in such a cowardly way. Catching hold of Gemellus by the scruff of his neck, he forced him to sit up. 'There,' he said, panting. 'You're going to look at me while I cut off your balls.'
'No!' Gemellus' voice rose to a cracked scream.
The next door along the alleyway opened and a man's head poked out.
'Get back inside,' Romulus shouted furiously. 'Or I'll castrate you too!'
The householder vanished, terrified by Romulus' threat. Things like this happened every day in Rome, and the powers that ruled the city couldn't be bothered to employ a force to maintain order. Who was he to intervene?
Romulus set to slicing open the lower part of Gemellus' tunic. Lying like a slab of meat on the butchers' block, the merchant did nothing to stop him. Only the movements of his chest and his piteous sobbing gave the lie that this was not a side of beef or pork. Off came Gemellus' wet, stinking licium, his undergarment, revealing his wizened, unwashed manhood. Romulus laughed when he saw it. 'Not much to lose, is it?' he taunted. 'I bet it'll hurt all the same.' Leaning forward, he grasped the shrunken bag below and pulled it tight to make the cut easier.
Gemellus' throat opened and he began to wail anew.
Romulus' pugio was a hairsbreadth away when something made him stop. Turning his head, he saw the urchin observing him with an expression of absolute terror. Their eyes met, and Romulus was reminded of himself as a boy, witnessing people being robbed and injured on the streets of Rome. Abruptly he felt his senses return, and a wave of shame swamped him. What am I doing, Romulus thought, looking with disgust at Gemellus' sagging flesh. Torturing an old man while a child watches? What have I become?
Wiping his dagger clean on Gemellus' tunic, Romulus stood. 'You're not worth it,' he said, breathing heavily. 'Living in this shithole is punishment enough.'
Gemellus didn't answer. Clutching alternately at his bleeding cheeks and his exposed privates, he lay motionless as Romulus sheathed his pugio.
'Come on,' Romulus said to the relieved-looking urchin. 'Time to find that inn, and pay you.'
The boy came alive at the mention of money.
'Are you hungry?' Romulus asked, ushering him towards the street.
There was a vigorous nod.
'Tell you what,' Romulus said, keen to show that he wasn't a complete thug. 'You've been a great help so far. I'll throw in some food as well as the ten sestertii, all right?'
The urchin's face split in a beaming smile. 'Thank you, sir.'
Romulus grinned, ruffling his hair. Decent meals had been rare in his childhood too.
His little guide gave him a tentative smile in return, but abruptly his expression changed to one of alarm. 'Look out!' he cried.
Too late, Romulus began to turn. Something heavy smashed into the back of his head and stars exploded across his vision. His knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground, catching sight of Gemellus right behind him.
