Roman Blood (7 page)

To acquire that head, stop at nothing. Break down the doors of a citizen's house. Beat his children, rape his wife—but leave his valuables in place, for once head and body are parted, the property of a proscribed Roman becomes the property of Sulla."

" N o t exactly . . ."

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"I misspoke, of course. I meant to say that when an enemy of the state is beheaded, his estate is confiscated and becomes property of the state—

meaning that it will be auctioned at the earliest convenient date at insanely low prices to Sulla's friends."

Even Cicero blanched at this. He concealed his agitation well, but I noticed his eyes shift for the briefest instant from side to side, as if he were wary of spies concealed among the scrolls. "You're a man of strong opinions, Gordianus. The heat loosens your tongue. But what has any of this to do with the subject at hand?"

I had to laugh. " A n d what is the subject? I think I've forgotten."

"Arranging a murder," Cicero snapped, sounding for all the world like a teacher of oratory attempting to steer an unruly pupil back to the prescribed topic. "A murder of purely personal motive."

"Well, then, I'm only trying to point out how easy it is these days to find a willing assassin. And not only in the Subura. Look on any street corner—yes, even this one. I'd gladly wager that I could leave your door, walk around the block exactly once, and return with a newfound friend more than willing to murder my pleasure-loving, whoremongering, hypothetical father."

" Y o u go too far, Gordianus. Had you been trained in rhetoric, you'd know the limits of hyperbole."

"I don't exaggerate. The gangs have grown that bold. It's Sulla's fault and no one else's. He made them his personal bounty hunters. He un-leashed them to run wild across Rome, like packs of wolves. Until the proscriptions officially ended last year, the gangs had almost unlimited power to hunt and kill. So they bring in the head of an innocent man, a man who's not on the list—so what? Accidents happen. Add his name to the list of the proscribed. The dead man becomes a retroactive enemy of the state. What matter if that means his family will be disinherited, his children ruined and reduced to paupers, fresh fodder for the gangs?

It also means that some friend of Sulla's will acquire a new house in the city."

Cicero looked as if a bad tooth were worrying him. He raised his hand to silence me. I raised my own hand to stave him off.

" I ' m only now reaching my point. You see, it wasn't only the rich and powerful who suffered during the proscriptions, and still suffer. Once Pandora's box is opened, no one can close it. Crime becomes habit. The unthinkable becomes commonplace. You don't see it from here, where 41

you live. This street is too narrow, too quiet. No weeds grow through the paving stones that run by your door. Oh, no doubt, in the worst of it, you had a few neighbors dragged from their homes in the middle of the night. Perhaps you have a view of the Forum from the roof, and on a clear day you might have counted the new heads added to the pikes.

"But I see a different Rome, Cicero, that other Rome that Sulla has left to posterity. They say he plans to retire soon, leaving behind him a new constitution to strengthen the upper classes and put the people in their place. And what is that place, but the crime-ridden Rome that Sulla bequeaths to us? My Rome, Cicero. A Rome that breeds in shadow, that moves at night, that breathes the very air of vice without the disguises of politics or wealth. After all, that's why you've called me here, isn't it?

To take you into that world, or to enter it myself and bring back to you whatever it is you're seeking. That's what I can offer you, if you're seeking the truth."

At that moment Tiro returned, bearing a silver tray set with three cups, a round loaf of bread, dried apples, and white cheese. His presence instantly sobered me. We were no longer two men alone in a room discussing politics, but two citizens and a slave, or two men and a boy, considering Tiro's innocence. I would never have spoken so recklessly had he never left the room. I feared I had said too much already.

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FIVE

T I R O set the tray on a low table between us. Cicero glanced at it without interest. " S o much food, T i r o ? "

"It's almost midday, Master. Gordianus will be hungry."

"Very well, then. We must show him our hospitality." He stared at the tray, hardly seeming to see it. He gently rubbed his temples, as if I had stuffed his head too full of seditious ideas.

The walk had made me hungry. The talk had left my mouth thick and dry. The heat had given me a deep thirst. Even so, I patiently waited for Cicero to initiate the meal—my politics may be radical but my manners have never been questioned—when Tiro gave me a start by leaning forward eagerly in his chair, tearing a piece from a loaf, and reaching for a cup.

At just such moments one learns how deeply convention is bred into the soul. For all that life had taught me about the arbitrary nature of fate and the absurdities of slavery, for all that I had endeavored from the moment I met him to treat Tiro as a man, I still let out a quiet gasp at seeing a slave take the first food from a table while his master sat back, not yet ready to begin.

They both heard it. Tiro looked up, puzzled. Cicero laughed softly.

"Gordianus is shocked. He's not used to our ways, Tiro, or to your manners. It's all right, Gordianus. Tiro knows that I never eat at midday.

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He's used to beginning without me. Please, eat something yourself. The cheese is quite good, all the way from the dairy at Arpinum, sent with my grandmother's love.

" A s for me, I'll have a bit of the wine. Only a bit; in this heat it's likely to turn sour in the stomach. Is it only me who suffers from that particular malady? I can't eat at all in midsummer; I fast for days at a time.

Meantime, while your mouth is busy with food instead of treason, perhaps I'll have a chance to say a bit more about my reasons for asking you here."

Cicero swallowed and gave a slight wince, as if the wine had begun to sour the moment it passed his lips. " W e strayed from the subject some while ago, didn't we? What would Diodotus say to that, Tiro? What have I been paying that old Greek for all these years if I'm not even able to hold an orderly conversation in my own home? Disorderly speech is not only unseemly; in the wrong time and the wrong place it can be deadly."

"I was never quite certain what the subject was, esteemed Cicero. I seem to recall that we were plotting to murder someone's father. My father, or was it Tiro's? No, they're both already dead. Perhaps it was yours?"

Cicero was not amused. "I introduced a hypothetical model, Gordianus, simply to sound you out about some factors—methodology, practicality, plausibility—regarding a very real and very deadly crime. A crime already accomplished. The tragic fact is that a certain farmer from the hamlet of Ameria—"

" M u c h like the hypothetical old farmer you described?"

"Exactly
like him. As I was saying, a certain farmer from Ameria was murdered in the streets of Rome on the Ides of September, the night of the full moon—almost eight months ago. His name you already seem to know: Sextus Roscius. Now, in exactly eight days—on the Ides of M a y —

the son of Sextus Roscius will go on trial, accused of arranging the murder of his father. I'll be defending him."

"With such a defense I should think there'd be no need for a prosecutor."

"What do you mean?"

"From all you've said, it seems obvious that you think the son is guilty."

"Nonsense! Was I that convincing? I suppose I should be pleased. I was only trying to paint the case as his accusers might describe it."

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"You're saying that you believe this Sextus Roscius is innocent?"

" O f course! Why else should I be defending him against these outrageous charges?"

"Cicero, I know enough about advocates and orators to know that they don't necessarily have to believe in a point to argue for it. Nor do they have to believe in a man's innocence to defend him."

Tiro suddenly glowered at me across the table. " Y o u have no right,"

he said, with a desperate little break in his voice. "Marcus Tullius Cicero is a man of the highest principles, of unquestionable integrity, a man who speaks what he believes and believes every word he speaks, rare enough in Rome these days perhaps, but even s o — "

" E n o u g h ! " Cicero's voice carried tremendous force, but little anger.

He raised his hand in an orator's gesture of
desist,
and seemed unable to keep from smiling.

"You'll forgive young Tiro," he said, leaning toward me with an air of confidentiality. "He's a loyal servant, and for that I'm grateful. There are few enough to be found nowadays." He gazed at Tiro with a look of pure affection, open, genuine, and unabashed. Tiro suddenly found it convenient to gaze elsewhere—at the table, the tray of food, the softly billowing curtain.

"But perhaps he is sometimes too loyal. What do you think, Gordianus? What do
you
think, Tiro—perhaps we should pose such a propo-sition to Diodotus the next time he calls and see what the master of rhetoric can make of it. A fit subject for debate: Is it possible that a slave can be too loyal to his master? That is to say, too enthusiastic in his devotion, too ready to spring to his master's defense?"

Cicero glanced at the tray and reached for a bit of dried apple. He held it between his thumb and forefinger and studied it as if considering whether his delicate constitution could tolerate even such a tiny morsel in the full heat of the day. There was a pause and a silence, broken only by the trilling of a bird in the atrium outside. In the stillness the room around us seemed to breathe again, or rather to attempt to breathe, vainly struggling to catch a shallow breath and coming up short; the curtain billowed tentatively inward, then out, then in again, never quite enough to release a gust of air in either direction, as if the breeze were a warm and palpable thing trapped beneath its brocaded hem. Cicero frowned and replaced the morsel on the tray.

Suddenly the curtain gave an audible snap. A breath of warmth eddied 45

across the tiles and over my feet. The room had finally released its pent-up sigh.

" Y o u ask if I believe that Sextus Roscius is innocent of his father's murder." Cicero spread his fingers and pressed the tips together. " T h e answer is yes. When you meet him, you too will believe in his innocence."

It seemed at last that we might be getting down to business. I had had enough of the games passing back and forth in Cicero's study, enough of the yellow curtain and the stifling heat.

" H o w exactly did he die, the old man? Bludgeons, knives, stones? How many assailants? Were they seen? Can they be identified? Where was the son at the very moment the crime took place, and how did he learn the news? Who else had reason to kill the old man? What were the terms of his will? Who brings the charges against the son, and w h y ? " I paused, but only to take a sip of wine. " A n d tell me this—"

"Gordianus," Cicero laughed, "if I knew all this, I would hardly be needing your services, would I ? "

"But you must know a little."

" M o r e than a little, but still not enough. Very well, I can at least answer your last question. The charges have been lodged by a prosecutor named Gaius Erucius. I see you've heard of him—or has the wine turned to vinegar in your mouth?"

"I've more than heard of him," I said. "From time to time I've actually worked for him, but only from hunger. Erucius was born a slave in Sicily; now he's a freedman with the shadiest law practice in Rome.

He takes cases for money, not merit. He'd defend a man who raped his mother if there was gold in it, and then turn around and prosecute the old woman for slander if he saw a profit. Any idea who's hired him to take on the case?"

" N o , but when you meet Sextus Roscius—"

" Y o u keep saying that I'll soon be meeting someone—first Caecilia Metella, now Sextus Roscius. Will they be arriving soon?"

"Actually, it's best if we pay them a visit ourselves."

"What makes you so certain that I'll be coming along? I came here under the impression that you had work for me, but so far you haven't even explained what you want. Nor have you made any mention of payment."

" I ' m aware of your regular fees, at least as Hortensius explained them.

I assume he would know."

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I nodded.

" A s for the j o b , it's this: I want proof that Sextus Roscius is innocent of his father's murder. Better than that, I want to know who the real murderers were. Even better, I want to know who hired those murderers, and why. And all of this in eight days, before the Ides."

" Y o u talk as if I'd already accepted the j o b . Perhaps I'm not interested, Cicero."

He shook his head and pressed his lips into a thin smile. "You're not the only man who can deduce another man's character before you've met him, Gordianus. I do know a thing or two about you. Three things, in fact. Any one of them would persuade you to take this case. First, you need the money. A man of your means, living in a big house up on the Esquiline—there can never be enough money. Am I right?"

I shrugged.

"Secondly, Hortensius tells me that you love a mystery. Or rather that you hate a mystery. You're the type that can't abide the unknown, that feels compelled to wrest truth from falsehood, strike order from chaos.

Who killed old Roscius, Gordianus? You're already hooked, like a fish on a line. Admit it."

"Well . . ."

"Thirdly, you're a man who loves justice."

" D i d Hortensius tell you that, too? Hortensius wouldn't know a just man f r o m — "

" N o one told me. That I deduced for myself, in the last half hour. No man speaks his mind as candidly as you have who isn't a lover of justice.

I'm offering you a chance to see it done." He leaned forward in his chair.

"Can you bear to see an innocent man put to death? Well, then—will you take the case, or won't y o u ? "

"I will."