Roman Blood (6 page)

"Time would still be easiest. Sixty-five, you said—how is his health?"

"Excellent. Probably better than yours. And why not? Everyone is always saying how overworked you are, running the estates, raising your family, working yourself into an early grave—while the old man hasn't a care in the world. All he does is enjoy himself. In the morning he rests.

34

In the afternoon he plans his evening. In the evening he stuffs himself with expensive food, drinks to excess, carouses with men half his age. The next morning he recovers at the baths and begins all over again. How is his health? I told you, he still patronizes the local whorehouse."

" F o o d and drink have been known to kill a man," I ventured. " A n d they say that many a whore has stopped an old man's heart."

Cicero shook his head. " N o t good enough, too unreliable. You hate him, don't you understand? Perhaps you fear him. You grow impatient for his death."

"Politics?" I offered.

Cicero ceased his pacing for a moment, smiled, and then resumed.

"Politics," he said. "Yes, in these days, in Rome—politics could certainly kill a man more quickly and surely than high living or a whore's embrace or even a midnight stroll through the Subura." He spread his hands wide open in an orator's despair. "Unfortunately, the old man is one of those remarkable creatures who manages to go through life without ever having any politics at all."

" I n R o m e ? " I said. "A citizen and a landowner? Impossible."

"Then say that he's one of those men like a rabbit—charming, vacu-ous, harmless. Never attracting attention to himself, never giving offense.

Not worth the bother of hunting, so long as there's larger game afoot.

Surrounded on every side by politics, like a thicket of nettles, yet able to slip through the maze without a scratch."

" H e sounds clever. I like this old man more and more."

Cicero frowned. "Cleverness has nothing to do with it. The old man has no strategy except to slip through life with the least possible inconvenience. He's lucky, that's all. Nothing reaches him. The Italian allies rise in revolt against Rome? He comes from Ameria, a village that waits until the last moment to join the revolt, then reaps the first fruits of the reconciliation; that's how he became a citizen. Civil war between Marius and Sulla, then between Sulla and Cinna? The old man wavers in his loyalty—a realist and an opportunist like most Romans these days—and emerges like the delicate maiden who traverses a raging stream by hopping from stone to stone without even getting her sandals wet. Those who have
no
opinions are the only people safe today. A rabbit, I tell you. If you leave it to politics to put him in danger, he'll live to be a hundred."

"Surely he can't be as vapid as you describe. Every man takes risks these days just by being alive. You say he's a landowner, with interests 35

in Rome. He must be a client to some influential family. Who are his patrons?"

Cicero laughed. "Even there he choses the blandest, safest possible family to ally himself with—the Metelli. Sulla's in-laws—or at least they were until Sulla divorced his fourth wife. And not just any of the Metelli, but the oldest, the most inert, and endlessly respectable of its many branches. Somehow or other he ingratiated himself to Caecilia Metella.

Have you ever met her?"

I shook my head.

" Y o u will," he said mysteriously. " N o , politics will never kill this old man for you. Sulla may fill up the Forum with heads on sticks, the Field of Mars may become a bowl of blood tipping into the Tiber—you'll still find the old man traipsing about after dark in the worst parts of town, stuffed from a dinner party at Caecilia's, blithely on his way to the neighborhood whorehouse."

Cicero abruptly sat down. The machine, it seemed, needed an occasional rest, but the cracked instrument continued to play. " S o you see that fate will not cooperate in taking the odious old man off your hands.

Besides, it may be that there's some urgent reason that you want him dead—not just hatred or a grudge, but some crisis immediately at hand.

You have to take action yourself."

" Y o u suggest that I murder my own father?"

"Exactly."

"Impossible."

" Y o u must."

" U n - R o m a n ! "

"Fate compels y o u . "

"Then—poison?"

He shrugged. "Possibly, if you had the proper access. But you're not an ordinary father and son, coming and going in each other's household.

There's been some bitterness between you. Consider: The old man has his own town house here in Rome, and seldom sleeps anywhere else. You live at the old family home in Ameria, and on the rare occasions when business brings you into the city, you never sleep in your father's house.

You stay with a friend instead, or even at an inn—the quarrel between you runs that deep. So you don't have easy access to the old man's dinner before he eats it. Bribe one of his servants? Unlikely and highly uncertain—in a family divided, the slaves always chose sides. They'll be far more loyal to him than to you. Poison is an unworkable solution."

36

The yellow curtain rippled. A gust of warm air slipped beneath its hem and entered the room like a mist clinging low to the ground. I felt it pool and eddy about my feet, heavy with the scent of jasmine. The morning was almost over. The true heat of the day was about to begin. I suddenly felt sleepy. So did Tiro; I saw him stifle a yawn. Perhaps he was simply bored. This was probably not the first time that he had heard his master run through the same string of arguments, refining his logic, worrying over the particular polish and gloss of each phrase.

I cleared my throat. "Then the solution seems obvious, esteemed Cicero. If the father must be murdered—at the instigation of his own son, a crime almost too hideous to contemplate—then it should be done when the old man is most vulnerable and most accessible. Some moonless night, on his way home from a party, or on his way to a brothel. No witnesses at that hour, at least none who'd be eager to testify. Gangs roaming the streets. There would be nothing suspicious about such a death. It would be easy to blame it on some passing group of anonymous thugs."

Cicero leaned forward in his chair. The machine was reviving. " S o you wouldn't commit the act yourself, by your own hand?"

"Certainly not! I wouldn't even be in Rome. I'd be far to the north in my house in Ameria—having nightmares, probably."

" Y o u ' d hire some assassins to do it for y o u ? "

" O f course."

"People you knew and trusted?"

"Would I be likely to know such people personally? A hardworking Amerian farmer?" I shrugged. " M o r e likely I'd be relying on strangers.

A gang leader met in a tavern in the Subura. A nameless acquaintance recommended by another acquaintance known to a casual friend . . ."

"Is that how it's done?" Cicero leaned forward in his chair, genuinely curious. He spoke no longer to the hypothetical parricide, but to Gordianus the Finder. "They told me that you would actually know a thing or two about this sort of business. They said: 'Yes, if you want to get in touch with the kind of men who don't mind getting blood on their hands, Gordianus is one place to start.' "

"They?
Whom do you mean, Cicero? Who says that I drink from the same cup with killers?"

He bit his lip, not quite certain how much he wanted to tell me yet.

I answered for him. "I think you mean Hortensius, don't you? Since it was Hortensius who recommended me to y o u ? "

37

Cicero shot a sharp glance at Tiro, who was suddenly quite awake.

" N o , master, I told him nothing. He guessed i t — " For the first time that day, Tiro sounded to me like a slave.

"Guessed? What do you mean?"

"Deduced
would be a better word. Tiro is telling the truth. I know, more or less anyway, what you've called me for. A murder case involving a father and son, both called Sextus Roscius."

" Y o u
guessed
that this was my reason for calling on you? But how?

I only decided yesterday to take on Roscius as a client."

I sighed. The curtain sighed. The heat crept up my feet and legs, like water slowly rising in a well. "Perhaps you should have Tiro explain it to you later. I think it's too hot for me to go through it all again step by step. But I know that Hortensius had the case to begin with, and that you have it now. And I presume that all this talk about hypothetical conspiracies has something to do with the actual murder?"

Cicero looked glum. I think he felt foolish at finding that I had known the true circumstances all along. " Y e s , " he said, "it's hot. Tiro, you'll bring some refreshment. Some wine, mixed with cool water. Perhaps some fruit. Do you like dried apples, Gordianus?"

Tiro rose from his chair. "I'll tell Athalena."

" N o , Tiro, fetch it yourself. Take your time." The order was demean-ing, and intentionally so; I could tell by the look of hurt in Tiro's eyes, and by the look in Cicero's as well, heavy-lidded and drooping from something other than the heat. Tiro was unused to being given such menial tasks. And Cicero? One sees it all the time, a master taking out petty frustrations on the slaves around him. The habit becomes so commonplace that they do it without thinking; slaves come to accept it without humiliation or repining, as if it were a god-sent inconvenience, like rainfall on a market day.

Cicero and Tiro were not nearly so advanced along that path. Before Tiro had disappeared pouting from the room, Cicero relented, as much as he could without losing face. " T i r o ! " he called. He waited for the slave to turn. He looked him in the eye. " B e sure to bring a portion for yourself as well."

A crueler man would have smiled as he spoke. A lesser man would have cast his eyes to the floor. Cicero did neither, and in that moment I discovered my first glimmering of respect for him.

Tiro departed. For a moment Cicero toyed with a ring on his finger, then turned his attention back to me.

38

" Y o u were about to tell me something of how one goes about arranging a murder in the streets of Rome. Forgive me if the question is presumptu-ous. I don't mean to imply that you yourself have ever offended the gods by taking part in such crimes. But they say—Hortensius says—that you happen to know more than a little about these matters. Who, how, and how much . . ."

I shrugged. " I f a man wants another man murdered, there's nothing so difficult about that. As I said, a word to the right man, a bit of gold passed from hand to hand, and the j o b is done."

"But where does one find the right man?"

I had been forgetting how young and inexperienced he was, despite his education and wit. "It's easier than you might think. For years the gangs have been controlling the streets of Rome after dark, and sometimes even in broad daylight."

"But the gangs fight each other."

" T h e gangs fight anyone who gets in their way."

"Their crimes are political. They ally themselves with a particular party—"

"They have no politics, except the politics of whatever man hires them. And no loyalty, except the loyalty that money buys. Think, Cicero. Where do the gangs come from? Some of them are spawned right here in Rome, like maggots under a rock—the poor, the children of the poor, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Whole dynasties of crime, generations of villains breeding pedigrees of vice. They negotiate with one another like little nations. They intermarry like noble families.

And they hire themselves out like mercenaries to whatever politician or general offers the grandest promises."

Cicero glanced away, peering into the translucent folds of the yellow curtain, as if he could see beyond it all the human refuse of Rome.

"Where do they all come from?" he muttered.

"They grow up through the pavement," I said, "like weeds. Or they drift in from the countryside, refugees from war after war. Think about it: Sulla wins his war against the rebellious Italian allies and pays his soldiers in land. But to acquire that land, the defeated allies must first be uprooted. Where do they end up, except as beggars and slaves in Rome? And all for what? The countryside is devastated by war. The soldiers know nothing of farming; in a month or a year they sell their holdings to the highest bidder and head back to the city. The countryside falls into the grip of vast landholders. Small farmers struggle to compete, 39

are defeated and dispossessed—they find their way to Rome. More and more I've seen it in my own lifetime, the gulf between the rich and poor, the smallness of the one, the vastness of the other. Rome is like a woman of fabulous wealth and beauty, draped in gold and festooned with jewels, her belly big with a fetus named Empire—and infested from head to foot by a million scampering lice."

Cicero frowned. "Hortensius warned me that you would talk politics."

"Only because politics is the air we breathe—I inhale a breath, and what else could come out? It may be otherwise in other cities, but not in the Republic, and not in our lifetimes. Call it politics, call it reality.

The gangs exist for a reason. No one can get rid of them. Everyone fears them. A man bent on murder would find a way to use them. He'd only be following the example of a successful politician."

You mean—

"I don't mean any particular politician. They all use the gangs, or try t o . "

"But you
mean
Sulla."

Cicero spoke the name first. I was surprised. I was impressed. At some point the conversation had slipped out of control. It was quickly turning seditious.

" Y e s , " I said. " I f you insist: Sulla." I looked away. My eyes fell on the yellow curtain. I found myself gazing at it and into it, as if in the vagueness of the shapes beyond I could make out the images of an old nightmare. "Were you in Rome when the proscriptions began?"

Cicero nodded.

" S o was I. Then you know what it was like. Each day the new list of the proscribed would be posted in the Forum. And who were always first in line to read the names? No, not anyone who might have been on the list, because they were all cowering at home, or wisely barricaded in the countryside. First in line were the gangs and their leaders—because Sulla didn't care who destroyed his enemies, or his imagined enemies, so long as they were destroyed. Show up with the head of a proscribed man slung over your shoulder, sign a receipt, and receive a bag of silver in exchange.