Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4)

by Steven Saylor

  ‘Nor do I. It’s merely an incidental detail.’ Perhaps it was the wine warming my blood, or the fresh breeze off the hillside; suddenly I felt fully awake and alert. I stared at the light from Capito’s house. It wavered on the rising ripples of warm air and seemed to stare back at me like a baleful eye. ‘Let’s go to last September, then. Sextus Roscius is murdered in Rome. Witnesses see the chief perpetrator, a strong man in black robes with a lame left leg.’

  ‘Magnus, without a doubt!’

  ‘He appears to know his victim. He is also left-handed, and quite strong.’

  ‘Magnus, again.’

  ‘The assassin is accompanied by two other thugs. One is a blond giant.’

  ‘Mallius Glaucia.’

  ‘Yes. The other – who knows? The shopkeeper says he had a beard. The widow Polia could identify them all, but she’ll never be persuaded to testify. At any rate, it’s Glaucia who arrives very early the next morning to give the news to Capito, carrying with him a bloody knife.’

  ‘What? That’s a detail I haven’t heard before.’

  ‘It comes from the taverner in Narnia.’

  ‘Ah, the one with the blind father. They’re both completely daft. Weak blood.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. The taverner tells me that Glaucia took the news straight to Capito. Who was the first to tell Sextus Roscius of his father’s death?’ I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

  Titus nodded. ‘Yes, that was me. I heard it early that morning at the common well in Ameria. When I saw Sextus that afternoon, I felt sure he knew already. But when I offered him my grief, the look on his face – well, it was a strange look. I couldn’t call it grief; you must know there was little love between them. Dread, that’s what I saw in his eyes.’

  ‘And surprise? Shock?’

  ‘Not exactly. Confusion and fear.’

  ‘So. The next day a more official messenger arrives, sent by the old man’s household in Rome.’

  Titus nodded. ‘And the day after that the remains of the dead man arrived. The Roscii are buried on a little hill beyond the villa; you can see the stelae from here on a clear day. Sextus buried his father on the eighth day and then began the seven days of mourning. Sextus never finished them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because within that time the soldiers arrived. They must have come from Volaterrae, up north, where Sulla was campaigning against the last Marian remnants in Etruria. Anyway, the soldiers arrived and made a public announcement in the town square that Sextus Roscius the elder had been declared an enemy of the state and that his death in Rome had been a legal execution at the behest of our esteemed Sulla. His entire estate was forfeit. Everything was to be auctioned – lands, houses, jewellery, slaves. The date and the place were announced, somewhere in Rome.’

  ‘And how did young Sextus react?’

  ‘No one knows. He went into seclusion at his villa, refusing to leave the house and seeing no visitors. All this might be quite proper for a man in mourning, but Sextus stood to lose everything. People began saying that perhaps it was true that his father had been proscribed. Who knows what the old man had been doing down in Rome? Perhaps he was a Marian spy, perhaps he had been found out in some plot to assassinate Sulla.’

  ‘But the proscriptions legally ended on the first of June. Roscius was killed in September.’

  Titus shrugged. ‘You talk like an advocate. If Sulla wanted the man dead, why shouldn’t it be legal, so long as the dictator declared it so?’

  ‘Was there much interest in the auction?’

  ‘Everyone knows they’re fixed. Why bother? Some friend of Sulla’s would end up paying a pittance for it all, and anyone else who cared to bid would be escorted from the hall. Believe me, we were all surprised when Magnus and a band of thugs from Rome showed up at Sextus’s door with some sort of official writ, telling him to surrender all his property and vacate at once.’

  ‘So he was pushed aside as easily as that?’

  ‘There was no one to see what actually happened, except the slaves, of course. People love to embellish. Some say that Magnus came upon him burning myrrh at his father’s grave, slapped the censer from his hands, and bullied him from the shrine at spear point. Others say he ripped the clothes from Sextus’s back and chased him into the road naked, setting hounds after him. I never heard either tale from Sextus; he refused to speak of it, and I wouldn’t press his shame.

  ‘In any case, Sextus and his family spent one night in the home of a merchant friend in Ameria, and the next morning Capito moved into the villa. You can imagine the eyebrows that were lifted at that. Not everyone was displeased; Sextus has his enemies and Capito his friends in this valley. Sextus goes directly to Capito; again, no one was there to witness it. In the end, Capito allows Sextus back onto the property, making him stay in a little house at one corner of the estate where they usually put up seasonal labourers at harvest time.’

  ‘And that was the end of it?’

  ‘Not quite. I called a meeting of the Amerian town council and told them we had to do something. It took considerable persuasion, believe me, to get some of those old bones to make a decision. And all the while Capito was glaring at me from across the table – oh, yes, Capito sits on our esteemed town council. Finally it was decided that we should protest against the proscription of Sextus Roscius, to attempt to clear his name and see that his property was restored to his son. Capito went along with everything. Sulla was still encamped at Volaterrae; a delegation of ten men was sent to plead our case – myself, Capito, and eight others.’

  ‘And what did Sulla say?’

  ‘We never saw him. First we were made to wait. Five days they kept us waiting, as if we were barbarians asking for favours, and not Roman citizens petitioning the state. Everyone was impatient and grumbling; they would have dropped it all and come home right then if I hadn’t shamed them into seeing it through. At last we were allowed to see not Sulla, but Sulla’s deputy, an Egyptian called Chrysogonus. You’ve heard of him?’ Titus asked, seeing the look that crossed my face.

  ‘Oh, yes. A young man, they say, of natural charm and great handsomeness, and the intelligence and ambition to turn them to his utmost advantage. He started as a slave in Sulla’s household, toiling in the gardens. But Sulla has an eye for beauty and doesn’t like to see it wasted on drudgery. Chrysogonus became the old man’s favourite. This was some years ago, when Sulla’s first wife was still alive. Sulla eventually sated himself with the slave’s body and rewarded him with freedom, riches, and a high place in his retinue.’

  Titus snorted. ‘I wondered what the story was. All we were told was that this Chrysogonus was a powerful man who had access to Sulla’s ear. I told them we wanted to see the dictator himself, but all the secretaries and adjutants shook their heads as if I were a child and said we’d be much better off to win the sympathy of this Chrysogonus first, who would then put the case before Sulla on our behalf.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Titus looked at me ruefully. ‘It went like this: we finally won our audience and were ushered standing into the presence of his Goldenness, who sat staring at the ceiling as if someone had struck him in the forehead with a hammer. Finally he condescended to blink his blue eyes and favour us with a fleeting glance. And then he smiled. I swear, you’ve never seen such a smile; as if Apollo himself had come down to earth. There was something aloof in it, but not cold. It was more like he was sorry for us, and sad, the way you might imagine a god would be sad to look at mere mortals.

  ‘He nodded. He inclined his head. He fixed his blue eyes on you and you had the feeling that a superior being was doing you a very great favour simply to acknowledge your existence. He listened to our petition and after that every man said his piece, except Capito, who kept in the back as stiff and silent as a stone. And then Chrysogonus stood up from his chair and threw back his shoulders, and he pushed a lock of golden hair from his forehead and put a finger to his lips, as if he were thinking hard; and it was almost e
mbarrassing to be a mere grubby mortal presuming to share the same room with such a perfect specimen of manhood.

  ‘He told us we were fine Romans to have gone to such pains in pursuit of justice. He said that such occurrences as the one we described were very, very rare, but that indeed, lamentably, regrettably, there had been a handful of instances of men falsely proscribed. At the very earliest opportunity he would present our petition to the great Sulla himself. In the meantime, we should be patient; surely we could see that the dictator of the Republic had a thousand concerns pressing on him from all sides, not least of which was a final effort to eradicate the vestiges of the Marian conspiracy where it was festering in the Etruscan hills. Ten heads bobbed up and down like corks on a wave, and mine was one of them. And I remember thinking, though I’m ashamed to say it now, that I was glad we hadn’t been allowed to see Sulla, for if being in the presence of his deputy was this intimidating, what bigger fools would we have made of ourselves dealing with the great man himself?

  ‘But then I cleared my throat, and somehow I found the nerve to say that if we couldn’t see Sulla, at least we insisted on having some sort of clear answer before we returned to Ameria. Chrysogonus turned his blue eyes on me and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, the way you might look at a slave who has the impertinence to interrupt a conversation with some trifle he thinks is important. And finally he nodded, and said, “Of course, of course,” and then he told us that when he returned to Rome he himself would take a stylus and mark the name of Sextus Roscius from the proscription lists with his own hand, and see to it that the dead man’s property was reconstituted and the deed restored to his son. We would have to be patient, of course, for the wheels of justice turn slowly in Rome, but never against the will of the people.

  ‘Then he looked straight at Capito, understanding that he had come into at least some of the confiscated property, and asked him if he would agree to such justice, even at his own expense. And Capito nodded and smiled as innocently as a child, and declared he had only the spirit of Roman law at heart, and if it could be proved that his late cousin had in fact not been an enemy of the state and of the beloved Sulla, he would gladly restore his share of the estate to the rightful heir, not even charging for the improvements he had made. And that night we celebrated with wine and a roast lamb at our tavern at Volaterrae and slept well, and in the morning we returned to Ameria and went our separate ways.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing. Sulla and his army finished their business at Volaterrae and returned to Rome.’

  ‘There was no word from Chrysogonus?’

  ‘None.’ Titus shrugged guiltily. ‘You know how it is, how you let such things languish – I’m a farmer, not a politician. I finally drafted a letter in December, and another in February. No answer. Perhaps something would have been done if Sextus Roscius himself had kept after it, but he was more secluded than ever. He and his family stayed in their little house on the estate and no one heard a word from them, as if they were prisoners, or as if Capito had made them his slaves. Well, if a man won’t stand up for himself, he can’t expect his neighbours to drag him to his feet.’

  ‘How long did this go on?’

  ‘Until April. That was when something must have happened between Capito and Sextus. In the middle of the night Sextus showed up at my doorstep with his wife and his two daughters. They were riding in a common ox cart, carrying their goods in their arms with not even a slave to drive. He asked me to take him in for the night, and of course I did. They stayed for four or five nights, I can’t remember—’

  ‘Three,’ said a quiet voice. It was the boy Lucius, whose presence I had almost forgotten. He sat against the corner of the low wall with his knees pulled to his chest. He was faintly smiling, the same way he had smiled at the mention of Roscius’s daughter when I met him earlier that day.

  ‘Well, then, three,’ said Titus. ‘I suppose it seemed longer. Sextus Roscius brought his gloom with him. My wife kept complaining he would bring ill luck. And of course, that young Roscia …’ he began, lowering his voice. ‘His elder daughter. Not exactly the best moral influence to bring into a home with young men.’ He glanced at Lucius, who looked up at the moon with a convincing imitation of deafness.

  ‘Then he left for Rome, telling me his father had had a patroness there who might have some influence with Sulla. No mention of a trial for murder. I assumed he’d got desperate enough to go and petition this Chrysogonus for himself.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it would surprise you to learn that Chrysogonus himself benefited from the carving up of Sextus Roscius’s estates.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that a dirty piece of business. And how do you know that?’

  ‘A slave named Carus told me this afternoon. He answers the door at Capito’s villa.’

  ‘Then the three of them were in it from the beginning – Capito, Magnus, and Chrysogonus.’

  ‘So it appears. Who but Chrysogonus could have illegally entered Sextus pater into the already closed proscription lists? Who wanted the old man dead, except Capito and Magnus?’

  ‘Well, there you have it. It was those three who plotted the murder of old Sextus Roscius, conspiring all along to have him added to the proscription lists and then buy up the land after the state confiscated it. And any outsider who might try to clear the matter up comes face to face with Chrysogonus, which is like having your nose to a brick wall. What a business, even dirtier than I thought. But now this, to blame Sextus Roscius for his father’s murder – surely they’ve gone too far even for a close friend of Sulla. It’s absurd, unspeakably cruel!’

  I looked up at the moon. It was already fat and white; in six days it would be full for the Ides, and Sextus Roscius would meet his fate. I lazily turned my head and peered through heavy lids at the yellow window shining from Capito’s villa. Why were they still awake? Surely Magnus and Glaucia were as tired from their day of riding as I was. What were they plotting now?

  ‘Even so,’ I said, losing the words in a yawn, ‘even so, there’s still some part that’s missing from the puzzle. Something that keeps it all from making sense. Even dirtier than you thought… .’

  I looked at the yellow window. I shut my eyes for just an instant, and didn’t open them again for many hours.

  XIX

  I woke with a blink to find myself alone in a dark room choked with heat. My mouth was dry, but I felt amazingly refreshed. I had slept without dreams. I lay on my back, and for a long moment was content simply to be still and sense the flow of life in my arms, legs, fingers, toes. Then I stirred, and realized there was a stiff penalty to pay for having ridden so hard the day before. I managed to sit up and swing my aching legs onto the floor. I was amazed again at how refreshed I felt, considering that I was waking while the world was still dark, until I glimpsed an odd flickering at the edge of the drapery that hung over the window, like a glint of white steel lit from nowhere amid the blackness. I pushed myself up from the divan and staggered stiffly to the window. I pushed the curtain aside and was consumed by hot, blinding light.

  At the same instant the door to the tiny room creaked open and Lucius stuck his head inside. ‘Finally,’ he said, using the exasperated tone with which children mimic their parents. ‘I tried to wake you twice before, but I couldn’t even make you groan. Everyone else has been up for hours.’

  ‘How late is it?’

  ‘Exactly noon. That’s why I came to see if you were up yet, because I just got back from town and noticed the sundial in the garden, and I wondered if you could still be asleep.’

  I looked about the room. ‘But how did I get here? And who undressed me?’ I stooped, groaning, to pick up my tunic, which had slid from the arm of a chair onto the floor.

  ‘Father and I carried you down here from the roof last night. You don’t remember? You were like a sack of bricks, and we couldn’t make you stop snoring.’

  ‘I never snore.’ Bethesda had told me so. Or did she lie to soothe my vanit
y?

  Lucius laughed. ‘They could hear you all over the house! My sister Tertia made a game of it. She said—’

  ‘Never mind.’ I started to slip the tunic over my head. The thing became twisted and tangled as if it had a life of its own. My arms were as stiff as my legs.

  ‘Anyway, Father said we should undress you, because your clothes were so sweaty and soiled from the trip. He made old Naia wash them for you before she went to bed last night. It’s so hot today, they’re already dry.’

  I finally managed to cover myself, none too graciously. I looked out of the window again. Not a breeze stirred the treetops. Slaves were busy in the fields, but the court below was empty except for a little girl playing with a kitten. The light on the paving stones was blinding. ‘This is impossible. I’ll never make it back to Rome today.’

  ‘And a good thing.’ This came from Titus Megarus, looming now behind his son with a stern look on his face. ‘I looked in this morning on that mare you rode from the city yesterday. Are you in the habit of driving a horse till it drops?’

  ‘I’m not much in the habit of using horses at all.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. No true horseman would have exhausted a fine animal in that fashion. You weren’t seriously thinking of riding her back today?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘I can’t allow it.’

  ‘Then how am I to leave?’

  ‘You’ll take one of my horses.’

  ‘Vespa’s owner will not be pleased.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that. Last night you told me that the trial of Sextus Roscius is scheduled for the Ides.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll come into the city the day before and bring Vespa with me. I’ll return her to the stables on the Subura Way myself, and if it might help I’ll find my way to the house of this advocate Cicero and tell him what I know. If he wants to call me as a witness at the trial – well, I suppose I’d be willing to show my face, even if Sulla himself is there. And here, before I forget, take this.’ He pulled a rolled parchment from his tunic.