Rubicon rsr-7

by Steven Saylor

  "Papa, is he right?" Diana clutched her husband's arm.

  I looked at the circle of armed men around us. Whether Pompey was right or not hardly seemed to matter. "Great One, the city may soon be in chaos. I need my son-in-law to protect the household."

  "He seems to have done a poor enough job of that!" Pompey's voice broke as he gazed down at Numerius. He swallowed hard. "But I won't deprive you of protection for your women and slaves, while you're out finding the killer of my kinsman. I shall leave you a bodyguard in Davus's place. You, there!" He called to one of the guards who had barged into my study, the one who had breathed garlic in my face. He was even bigger than Davus, and would have been ugly even without his broken nose and the hideous scar across one cheek. "You're called Cicatrix, aren't you?"

  "Yes, Great One."

  "You shall stay here and watch this house for me."

  "Yes, Great One." Cicatrix gave me a surly look.

  "Gnaeus Pompey, please, no!" I whispered.

  "Yes, Gordianus. I insist."

  I looked at the stunned faces of Davus and Diana. I felt as if a great stone was on my chest. "Great One, your kinsman is dead. That such a thing happened in my home fills me with shame. But as you yourself said, he's only the first. Thousands may die. What does one murder mean, when all the laws are suspended?"

  "You ask questions, Finder. I want answers. Discover who murdered Numerius, and then we shall see about returning your son-in-law to you."

  As the last of the sunlight retreated from the garden, so did Pompey's men, taking Davus with them and carrying the body of Numerius. Pompey left the device that had been used to strangle him with me, thinking it might be of some use in finding his killer. I could hardly stand to touch it.

  Diana wept. Bethesda emerged from the house and gave me an accusing look. Mopsus and Androcles followed after her with my grandson between them, all holding hands. At the sight of the ugly giant Pompey had left to take Davus's place, little Aulus burst into tears, pulled free and toddled frantically back into the house.

  IV

  Cicero's house was only a short distance from my own, along the rim road of the Palatine Hill. Even on such a brief walk I would normally have taken Davus with me for protection, especially after dark. On this night, of all nights, I sorely missed him.

  All around me I felt the uneasiness of the city, like a sleeper in the throes of a nightmare. The rustling of many footsteps rose up from the Forum in the valley below. Torches, like tiny fireflies at such a distance, darted to and fro across the open squares. What were so many people doing out after dark? They were lighting votives in the temples, I thought, praying for peace… making preparations for hasty departures… banging on their bankers' locked doors… buying up the last scraps of food and fuel in the market stalls. I rounded a corner, and the Capitoline Hill came into view. At its summit, great fires had been lit in the braziers before the Temple of Jupiter- watchfires to alert the people that an invading army was on the march.

  Two guards were stationed outside Cicero's door. They appeared supremely unimpressed by the approach of a gray-haired visitor without even a bodyguard to accompany him.

  My relations with Cicero were strained at best. I asked to see his private secretary, with whom I had always been on closer terms.

  The younger of the guards scratched his head. "Tiro? Never heard of him. No, wait- isn't that the one who died while the Master was on his way home from Cilicia?"

  The other guard, a fellow with a bristling beard, saw my alarm and laughed. "Pay no attention to this young idiot. He's been around only a few months, never even met Tiro, who isn't dead, just too sick to travel."

  "I don't understand. Is Tiro here or isn't he?"

  "He isn't."

  "Where is he?"

  The older guard looked thoughtful. "Now what is the name of that place? In Greece, close to the water…"

  "What town in Greece isn't close to water?" I said.

  "This one starts with a P…"

  "Piraeus?"

  "No…"

  "Patrae?"

  "That's it! I was with the Master during his stint as governor of Cilicia, you see, and so was Tiro, of course. Last summer, we all started back to Rome. Took a slow, easy route. Along about November, Tiro fell sick and had to stay behind with one of the Master's friends in Patrae. The Master pushed on, and we got back to Rome this month, just in time to celebrate his birthday."

  "Cicero's birthday?"

  "Three days before the Nones of Januarius. Fifty-seven- same age as Pompey, they say."

  "What about Tiro?"

  "He and the Master write each other back and forth, but it's always the same. Never seems to get much worse, but never gets much better, either. Still not well enough to travel."

  "I see. I had no idea. This is bad news."

  "For Tiro? I don't know about that. I figure he's in a good place about now. Lots of peace and quiet in Patrae, I should think. Nice place to convalesce. Wouldn't want to be in Rome these days if I didn't have two strong legs and felt up to running."

  "I see your point."

  "Was there somebody else in the household you wanted to see?"

  "Want to see? No. Nonetheless, tell your master that Gordianus the Finder requests a visit."

  Whatever recriminations had passed between us in former days seemed to have been forgotten by Cicero. I waited in the foyer for only a moment before he came to greet me. I received his embrace stiffly, startled by his warmth. I wondered if he had been drinking, but I smelled no wine on his breath. When he drew back I took a hard look at him.

  I had braced myself to encounter Cicero in one of his less pleasant moods- the self-righteous, self-made man, smug friend of the powerful, peevish settler of old scores, priggish arbiter of virtue. I saw instead a man with jowls and receding hair and watery eyes, who looked as if he had just received the worst news of his life.

  He gestured for me to follow him. The mood in his house matched the mood of the city- a panic barely contained by purposeful activity, as slaves hurried back and forth and spoke in hushed voices. Cicero led me first to his study, but the room was like a beehive, with slaves packing scrolls into boxes.

  "This won't do," he said apologetically. "Come, there's a little room off the garden where we can talk quietly."

  The little room was an exquisitely appointed chamber with a sumptuous Greek rug underfoot. A brazier on a tripod in the middle of the room illuminated walls painted with pastoral landscapes. Herdsmen dozed amid sheep, and satyrs peeked from behind little roadside temples.

  "I've never seen this room before," I said.

  "No? It was one of the first rooms Terentia decorated when we came back and rebuilt, after Clodius and his gang burned down the house and sent me into exile." He smiled ruefully. "Now Clodius is dust, but I'm still here- and so are you, Gordianus. But for what? To see it all come to this…"

  Cicero paced nervously in a circle around the brazier, casting deep shadows across the walls. Abruptly he stopped his pacing and shot me a quizzical look. "Can it really have been thirty years since we first met, Gordianus?"

  "Thirty-one, actually."

  "The trial of Sextus Roscius." He shook his head. "We were all so young then! And brave, the way young men are, because they don't know any better. I, Marcus Tullius Cicero, took on the dictator Sulla in the courts- and bested him! I think back now and wonder how I could ever have been so mad. But it wasn't madness. It was bravery. I saw a terrible wrong and a way to redress it. I knew the danger and went ahead anyway, because I was young and thought I could change the world. Now… now I wonder if I can be that brave again. I fear I'm too old, Gordianus. I've seen too much… suffered too much…"

  In my own recollections, Cicero's motives had never been quite as pure as he was painting them, colored as they were by shrewd ambition. Was he brave? Certainly he had taken risks- and been rewarded with fame, honor, and wealth. True, Fortune had not always smiled on him; he had suffered defeats and humiliatio
ns, especially in recent years. But he had caused others to suffer much worse. Men had been put to death without trial when he was consul, in the name of preserving the state.

  Could any man advance as far in politics as Cicero had, and keep his hands entirely clean? Perhaps not. What rankled me was his insistence in presenting himself as the untarnished champion of virtue and reason. It was not a pose; it was the picture he had of himself. His unflagging self-justification had often exasperated, even infuriated, me. But now, in the darkness that had fallen on Rome, with the choice narrowed between one military leader and another, Cicero began to seem like not such a bad fellow after all.

  He shook his head. "Can you believe it? That it's happening again? That we must go through the same madness all over again? Our lives began with civil war, and now they shall end with it. A generation passes, and people forget. But do they really not remember how it was, in the war between Sulla and his enemies? Rome itself besieged and taken! And the horrors that followed, when Sulla set himself up as dictator! You remember, Gordianus. You were here. You saw the gaping heads mounted on bloody pikes in the Forum- decent, respectable men, hunted down and murdered by bounty hunters, their property seized and auctioned off to Sulla's favorites, their families impoverished and disgraced. Sulla got rid of his enemies- cleansing the state, he called it- made a few reforms, then stepped down and put the Senate back in charge. From that day until this, I have spent every hour of every day doing everything I could to fend off another such catastrophe. And yet- here we are. The Republic is about to come crashing down around us. Was this inevitable? Was there no way this could have been avoided?"

  My mouth was dry. I wished that he would offer me some wine. "Pompey and Caesar may yet patch up their differences."

  "No!" He shook his head and gestured wildly. "Caesar may send messages of peace and pretend that he's willing to parlay, but that's just for show, so that he can say later on, 'I did my best to keep the peace.' The moment he crossed the Rubicon, any hopes for a peaceful settlement vanished. On the far side of the river, he was a legally commissioned promagistrate in command of Roman legions. Once he crossed the bridge into Italy with armed men, he became an outlaw at the head of an invading army. There's no way to answer him now except with another army."

  "Some people," I said, speaking slowly and carefully, "would say that the hope for peace vanished a few days before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, on the day the Senate passed the Ultimate Decree and drove Caesar's friend Marc Antony out of the city. That was as good as declaring Caesar an enemy of the state. You did the same to Catilina, when you were consul. We know how Catilina ended. Can you blame Caesar for mustering his troops and making the first move?"

  Cicero looked at me darkly. The old antagonism between us began to stir. "Spoken like a true Caesarian, Gordianus. Is that the side you've chosen?"

  I walked to the brazier and warmed my hands. It was time to speak of something else. "I was sorry to learn of Tiro's illness. I understand he's still in Greece. Have you heard from him lately? Is he better?"

  Cicero seemed disconcerted by the change of subject. "Tiro? Why-? But of course, you and Tiro have always remained friends, even when you and I have not. Yes, I think he may be somewhat better."

  "What is his malady?"

  "Recurring fever, poor digestion, weakness. He can't leave his bed, much less travel."

  "I'm sorry to hear it. You must miss him terribly, under these circumstances."

  "There's no man in the world I trust more than Tiro." A silence ensued, finally broken by Cicero. "Is that why you came tonight, Gordianus? To ask after Tiro?"

  "No."

  "Why, then? Surely it wasn't concern for your old friend and patron Cicero that drew you out alone on such a night, without even that hulking son-in-law of yours to look after you."

  "Yes, without even my son-in-law," I said quietly, seeing in my mind the look on Diana's face, and Davus looking over his shoulder as Pompey's men dragged him off. "I understand that Pompey came to visit you earlier today. And before that, Pompey's kinsman, Numerius."

  Cicero scowled. "Those damned guards at the door! Their jaws are always flapping."

  "It wasn't the guards who told me. It was Pompey himself. After he left you, he came to my house. So did Numerius, earlier in the day. Numerius came to see you, and then to see me."

  "What of it?"

  "Numerius never left my house alive. He was murdered in my garden."

  Cicero looked aghast. His reaction seemed almost too extreme. I reminded myself that he was an orator used to performing to the farthest person in a crowd, and was prone to overact by force of habit. "But this is terrible! Murdered, you say. But how?"

  "Strangled."

  "By whom?"

  "That's what Pompey would like to know."

  Cicero tilted his head back and raised his eyebrows. "I see. The old hound has been put to the scent again."

  "The first place the scent leads is back to this house."

  "If you think there's any connection between Numerius's visit here and… what happened to him later, that's preposterous."

  "Still, you were one of the last people he spoke to. One of the last… besides myself… to see him alive. Did you know him well?"

  "Numerius? Well enough."

  "From the tone of your voice, I take it you didn't care for him."

  Cicero shrugged. Once again, the gesture seemed too broad. What was Cicero really thinking? "He was likable enough. A charming young fellow, most people would say. The apple of Pompey's eye."

  "Why did he come to visit you this morning?"

  "He brought news from Pompey. 'The Great One is vacating Rome, heading south. The Great One says that any true friend of the Republic will do the same at once.' That was his message for me."

  "It sounds almost like a threat," I said. "An ultimatum."

  Cicero looked at me warily but said nothing.

  "And then Numerius left?"

  "Not immediately. We… talked a bit, about the state of the city and such. Pompey hasn't called on all his allies to leave immediately. The consuls and some of the magistrates will stay on, a sort of skeleton government, enough to keep the city from falling entirely into chaos. Even so, the treasury will be closed, the bankers will flee, everything will come to a standstill…" He shook his head. "We talked a bit… and then Numerius left."

  "Was anyone with him?"

  "He came alone and he left alone."

  "Odd, that he should go abroad in the city on Pompey's business without even a bodyguard."

  "You've just done the same, Gordianus, and after dark. I suppose Numerius wished to moved as quickly and freely as he could. There must have been plenty of other senators he had to call on, all over the city."

  I nodded. "There were no harsh words between you, then?"

  Cicero glared at me. "I may have raised my voice. Those damned guards! Did they tell you they heard me shouting?"

  "No. Did you shout at Numerius that loudly? What was the altercation about?"

  He swallowed hard. The knob in his throat bobbed up and down. "How do you think I felt, when Numerius told me to leave the city by daybreak? I've been away from Rome for a year and a half governing a miserable province, and now that I'm back I hardly catch a breath before I'm told to pack up and flee like a refugee. If I raised my voice, if I shouted a bit, what of it?"

  "You're raising your voice now, Cicero."

  He pressed a hand against his chest and took several deep breaths. I had never seen him so overwrought; it unnerved me. Whatever their flaws, Pompey and Cicero represented models of Roman self-assurance and self-discipline, the military giant and the political genius. Both had known setbacks, but always triumphed in the long run. Now something was different, and both seemed to sense it. Born the same year, they were a few years younger than I, yet I felt like the child who sees his parents in a panic: if they have lost control, then all must be chaos.

  He went on at a lower pitch. "It's a mistake for Po
mpey to flee. If Caesar is allowed to enter the city without opposition, he'll break into the treasury and squander the wealth of our ancestors to bribe the street gangs. He'll call together whatever's left of the Senate- debtors, discontents, rabble-rousers- and claim it's the legitimate government. Then it will be Pompey and those who fled who are outlaws."

  "Have you said as much to Pompey?"

  "Yes. Do you know what he replied? 'Sulla could do it, why not I?' It always comes back to Sulla!"

  "I don't understand."

  "Sulla abandoned the city to his enemies and then retook it, with Pompey as one of his generals. Thirty years later, Pompey thinks he can do the same if the need arises. Can you imagine the city under siege? Disease, hunger, fires spreading out of control- and then the horror of the conquest…"

  He stared into the flames of the brazier and again tried to calm himself. "For a long time now, Pompey's mind has been set on playing Sulla. Once Caesar is defeated, Pompey will do what Sulla did. He'll make himself dictator and purge the Senate. He'll draw up a list of enemies. Confiscations, heads on stakes in the Forum…"

  "But surely not your head, Cicero." I tried to make light of his fear, but the look he shot back at me was ghastly.

  "Why not? If I'm still in Rome tomorrow, Pompey will call me his enemy."

  "Follow him, then."

  "And make myself Caesar's enemy? What if Caesar wins? I shall never be able to return. I was exiled from Rome once. Never again!" He circled the brazier until he stood opposite me. His eyes flashed, catching the light. The flickering flames and shadows transformed his face into a grim mask. "We must all choose sides, Gordianus. No more argument, no more procrastination. This side, or that. But toward what end? No matter who wins, we shall end up with a tyrant. What a choice- beheaded if I pick the wrong side, a slave if I pick the right one!"