‘He has no bodyguard?’ I said.
‘None to speak of. Two slaves accompany him. More for convenience than protection.’
‘Armed?’
‘Probably not.’
‘My hypothetical father is asking for trouble.’
Cicero nodded. ‘Indeed. The streets of Rome are hardly the place for any decent citizen to go gadding about in the middle of the night. Especially an older man. Especially if he has the look of money about him, and no armed guard. Foolhardy! Taking his life into his hands, day by day – such an old fool. Sooner or later he’ll come to no good end, or so you think. And yet, year after year he keeps up this outrageous behaviour, and it comes to nothing. You begin to think that some invisible demon or spirit must be looking after him, for he never comes to harm. Never once is he robbed. Not once is he even threatened. The worst that occurs is that he may be accosted by a beggar or a drunkard or some vagrant whore late at night, and these he can easily handle with a coin or a word to his slaves. No, time seems not to be cooperating. Left to his own devices, the old man may very well live forever.’
‘And would that be so bad? I think I’m beginning to like him.’
Cicero raised an eyebrow. ‘On the contrary, you hate him. Never mind why. Simply assume for the moment that, for whatever reason, you want him dead. Desperately.’
‘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. 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.’
‘Food and drink have been known to kill a man,’ I ventured. ‘And they say that many a whore has stopped an old man’s heart.’
Cicero shook his head. ‘Not 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.’
‘In Rome?’ I said. ‘A citizen and a landowner? Impossible.’
‘Then say that he’s one of those men like a rabbit – charming, vacuous, harmless. Never attracting attention to himself, never giving offence. 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.’
‘He 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 in Rome. He must be a client to some influential family. Who are his patrons?’
Cicero laughed. ‘Even there he chooses 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.
‘You will,’ he said mysteriously. ‘No, 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 neighbourhood whorehouse.’
Cicero abruptly sat down. The machine, it seemed, needed an occasional rest, but the cracked instrument continued to play. ‘So 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.’
‘You suggest that I murder my own father?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Impossible.’
‘You must.’
‘Un-Roman!’
‘Fate compels you.’
‘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 choose sides. They’ll be far more loyal to him than to you. Poison is an unworkable solution.’
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 forwards in his chair. The machine was reviving. ‘So 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.’
‘You’d hire some assassins to do it for you?’
‘Of course.’
‘People you knew and trusted?’
‘Would I be likely to know such people personally? A hardworking Amerian farmer?’ I shrugged. ‘More likely I’d be relying on strangers. A gang leader met in a tavern in the Subura. A nameles
s acquaintance recommended by another acquaintance known to a casual friend …’
‘Is that how it’s done?’ Cicero was 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 you?’
Cicero shot a sharp glance at Tiro, who was suddenly quite awake.
‘No, Master, I told him nothing. He guessed it –’ 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.’
‘You 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. ‘Yes,’ 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.’
‘No, Tiro, fetch it yourself. Take your time.’ The order was demeaning, 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 godsent 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. ‘Tiro!’ he called. He waited for the slave to turn. He looked him in the eye. ‘Be sure to bring a portion for yourself as well.’
A crueller 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.
‘You 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 presumptuous. 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. ‘If 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 job 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.’
‘The 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, 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 foetus 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 to.’
‘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.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If 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.
‘So 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. 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.’
‘Not exactly …’
‘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 frie
nds.’
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. ‘And 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.’
‘You 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 unleashed 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 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 neighbours 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.
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 5