Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4)

by Steven Saylor

  ‘No mere description of these bandits will suffice to acquaint you with the blackness of their characters. No simple catalogue of their crimes will make manifest their degree of high-handedness in daring to accuse Sextus Roscius of parricide. I must begin at the beginning and recount for you the whole course of events that have led to this moment. Then you will know the full degradation to which an innocent man has been subjected. Then you will understand completely the audacity of his accusers and the unspeakable horror of their crimes. And you will see as well, not fully but with frightening clarity, the calamitous state into which this republic has fallen.’

  Cicero was like a man transformed. His gestures were strong and unequivocal. His voice was passionate and clear. Had I seen him from a distance I would not have recognized him. Had I heard him from another room I would not have known his voice.

  I had witnessed such transformations before, but only in the theatre or on certain religious occasions, when one expects to be startled by the elasticity of the human vessel. To see it occur before my eyes in a man I thought I knew was startling. Had Cicero known all along that such a change would come upon him in his moment of need? Had Rufus and Tiro? Surely they must have known, for there was no other way to account for the serene confidence that had never left them. What had they all been able to see in Cicero that I could not?

  Erucius had entertained the crowd with melodrama and bombast, and the mob had been well satisfied. He had threatened the judges to their faces, and they had suffered his abuse in silence. Cicero seemed determined to stir true passion in his listeners, and his hunger for justice was infectious. His decision to indict Chrysogonus from the beginning had been a bold gamble. At the very mention of the name, Erucius and Magnus were thrown into a visible panic. Clearly they had expected a meek opposition that would offer as rambling and circumstantial an oration as their own. Instead Cicero plunged into the tale up to his neck, omitting nothing.

  He described the circumstances of the elder Sextus Roscius, his connections in Rome and his long-standing feud with the cousins Magnus and Capito. He described their notorious characters. (Capito he compared to a scarred and hoary gladiator, and Magnus to an old fighter’s protégé who had already surpassed his master in wreaking havoc.) He specified the time and place of Sextus Roscius’s murder, and noted the odd fact that Mallius Glaucia had ridden all night to take a bloody dagger and report the death to Capito in Ameria. He detailed the connection between the cousins and Chrysogonus; the illegal proscription of Sextus Roscius after his death and after all such proscriptions had ceased by law; the useless protestations of the town council of Ameria; the acquisition of the Roscius estate by Chrysogonus, Magnus, and Capito; their attempts to eliminate Sextus Roscius the younger and his flight to Caecilia Metella in Rome. He reminded the judges of the query applied to every crime by the great Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla: who profits?

  When he approached the matter of the dictator, he did not flinch; he seemed almost to smirk. ‘I remain convinced, good Judges, that all this took place without the knowledge, indeed beneath the notice, of the venerable Lucius Sulla. After all, his sphere is vast and wide; national affairs of the utmost importance claim all his attention as he busily repairs the wounds of the past and forestalls the threats of the future. All eyes are on him; all power resides in his sure hands. To build peace or wage war – the choice, and the means to carry it out, are his and his alone. Imagine the host of petty miscreants who surround such a man, who watch and wait for those occasions when his attention is fully concentrated elsewhere so that they may rush in and take advantage of the moment. Sulla the Fortunate he truly is, but surely, by Hercules, there is no one so beloved by Fortune that there does not lurk within his vast household some dishonest slave or, worse still, a cunning and unscrupulous exslave.’

  He consulted his notes and refuted every point of Erucius’s oration, ridiculing its simplemindedness. He countered Erucius’s argument that Sextus Roscius’s obligations to remain in the country had been a sign of discord between father and son with a long digression on the value and honour of rural life – always a pleasing theme to citified Roman ears. He protested that the slaves who had witnessed the murder could not be called as witnesses, because their new owner – Magnus, who now kept them hidden away in the house of Chrysogonus – refused to allow it.

  He meditated on the horrors of parricide, a crime so grave that a conviction demanded absolute proof. ‘I would almost say that the judges must see the son’s hands sprinkled with blood if they are to believe a crime so monstrous, so foul, so unnatural!’ He described the ancient punishment for parricide, to the crowd’s mingled horror and fascination.

  His oration was so exhaustive and lengthy that the judges began shifting in their seats, no longer from the alarm of hearing Sulla’s name, but from restlessness. His voice began to grow hoarse, even though he occasionally took sips from a cup of water hidden behind the podium. I began to think he was stalling for time, though I couldn’t imagine why.

  For some while Tiro had been absent from the bench of the accused – relieving himself, I had assumed, since I felt a growing need to do the same thing myself. At that very moment Tiro came hobbling briskly along the gallery, leaning on his crutch, and took his place at the bench. From atop the Rostra Cicero looked down and raised an eyebrow. Some sort of signal passed between them, and they both smiled.

  Cicero cleared his throat and took a long draught of water. He took a deep breath and for a brief moment closed his eyes. ‘And now, Judges, we come to the matter of a certain scoundrel and exslave, Egyptian by birth, endlessly avaricious by nature – but look, here he comes now with a splendid retinue trailing behind, down from his fine mansion on the Palatine, where he dwells in opulence among senators and magistrates from the oldest families of the Republic.’

  Alerted by Erucius, Chrysogonus had at last arrived.

  His bodyguards made short work of clearing the last row of the gallery, where a few lucky members of the crowd at large had taken the only seats left over by the lesser nobles. Heads turned and a murmur passed through the square as Chrysogonus strode to the centre of the bench and sat. He was surrounded by so many retainers that some were left standing in the aisles.

  I turned my head with the rest to catch a glimpse of the legendary golden locks, the lofty Alexander-like brow, the strong, broad jaw which today was set in a hard, grim line. I turned back to look at Cicero, who seemed to be physically girding himself for attack, drawing up his thin shoulders and lowering his forehead like a charging goat.

  ‘I have been making inquiries about this exslave,’ he said. ‘I find he is very wealthy, and not ashamed to show it. Besides his mansion on the Palatine he has a fine country retreat, not to mention a host of farms, all of them on excellent soil and close to the city. His house is crammed with Delian and Corinthian vessels of gold, silver, and copper – among them a mechanical boiling urn which he recently bought at auction at so exorbitant a price that passersby, hearing his final bid, thought that a whole estate was being sold. The total value of his embossed silver, embroidered coverlets, paintings, and marble statues is beyond computation – unless one might compute the precise amount of plunder that could be looted from various illustrious families and heaped up in one house!

  ‘But these are only his mute possessions. What of his speaking possessions? They comprise a vast household of slaves with the most exquisite skills and natural endowments. I need hardly mention the common trades – cooks, bakers, garment makers, litter bearers, carpenters, upholsterers, dust maids, scrub maids, painters, floor polishers, dish washers, handymen, stableboys, roofers, and medical experts. To charm his ears and soothe his mind he owns such a host of musicians that the whole neighbourhood rings with the continual sound of voices, strings, drums, and flutes. At night he fills the air with the din of his debaucheries – acrobats perform and lewd poets declaim for his pleasure. When a man leads such a life, Judges, can you imagine his daily expenses? The cost o
f his wardrobe? His budget for lavish entertainments and sumptuous meals? One should hardly call his dwelling a house at all, but rather a factory of dissolution and vice, and a lodging house for every sort of criminal. The entire fortunes of a Sextus Roscius would hardly last him a month!

  ‘Look at the man himself, Judges – turn your heads and look! With his hair so carefully curled and scented, how he struts about the Forum with his following of Roman-born citizens who disgrace their togas by appearing in the retinue of an exslave! See what contempt he has for all those about him, how he considers no one a human being compared with himself, how he puffs himself up with the illusion that he alone possesses all power and wealth.’

  I glanced over my shoulder. Anyone who at that moment might be seeing Chrysogonus for the first time would never have taken him for a handsome man. His face had turned so bloated and red that he appeared to be on the verge of apoplexy. His eyes bulged from their sockets. I had never seen so much fury pent up inside a body so rigid. If he had literally exploded I would hardly have been surprised.

  Cicero, from the Rostra, could clearly see the effect his words were producing and yet went on without pausing. He, too, looked excited and flushed. He spoke more and more rapidly, and yet maintained complete control, never tripping over a syllable or searching for a word.

  ‘I fear, from my attack on this creature, that some may misapprehend me, that you may assume that I mean to attack the aristocratic cause that has proven triumphant in our civil wars, and their champion, Sulla. Not so. Those who know me know that I longed for peace and reconciliation in the wars, but reconciliation having failed, victory went to the more righteous party. This was due to the will of the gods, the zeal of the Roman people, and of course the wisdom, power, and good fortune of Lucius Sulla. That the victors should have been rewarded and the vanquished punished is not for me to question. But I cannot believe that the aristocracy roused itself to arms only so that its slaves and exslaves should be made free to glut themselves on our goods and property.’

  I could stand it no longer. My bladder felt as near to bursting as Chrysogonus’s swollen cheeks.

  I rose from my seat and sidestepped past nobles who scowled at the distraction and fastidiously tugged up the hem of their togas, as if the mere touch of my foot might soil the cloth. While I escaped down the crowded aisle between the judges and the gallery, I glanced back into the square and felt that odd detachment of an anonymous spectator leaving the heart of the furore – Cicero passionately gesticulated, the crowd looked raptly on, Erucius and Magnus gritted their teeth. Tiro happened to glance towards me. He smiled, then looked suddenly alarmed. He gave me a cramped wave of summons. I smiled and gave him a wave of dismissal in return. He gestured more urgently and began to rise from his seat. I turned my back to him and hurried on. If there was some last, hushed conference he wanted with me, it would have to wait until I had tended to more pressing business. Only later did I realize that he was trying to warn me of the danger at my back.

  At the end of the gallery I passed by Chrysogonus and his party. At that moment I imagined I could actually feel the heat that radiated from his blood-red face.

  I pushed my way past the throng of retainers and slaves who filled the space behind the gallery. The street beyond was open and empty. Some spectators with no civic pride had already left a stench of urine in the nearest gutter, but my bladder wasn’t so weak that I couldn’t wait until I arrived at the public latrine. Behind the Shrine of Venus there was a small alcove specifically for the purpose, situated just above the Cloaca Maxima, with a slightly tilted floor and drains at the base of each wall.

  An old man with a grizzled beard and a spotless white toga was just leaving as I stepped inside. He nodded as he passed. ‘Quite a trial, is it not?’ he wheezed.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘This Cicero is not a bad speaker.’

  ‘A fine speaker,’ I agreed hurriedly. The old man departed. I stood against the inmost wall, staring at the pitted limestone and holding my breath against the stench. Thanks to an acoustical curiosity I was able to hear Cicero from the Rostra. His voice was echoey but distinct: ‘The ultimate aim of the accusers is as clear as it is reprehensible: nothing less than the complete elimination of the children of the proscribed, by any means at their disposal. Your sworn judgment and the execution of Sextus Roscius are to be the first steps in this campaign.’

  Cicero had reached his closing arguments. I tried to hurry my bladder. I closed my eyes and the floodgates opened. The sensation of relief was exquisite.

  That was when I heard a low whistle behind me and stopped in midstream. I looked over my shoulder to see Mallius Glaucia standing ten paces behind me. He smoothed his hand down the front of his tunic until he closed it around the unmistakable shape of a dagger hidden within the folds at his waist. He fondled the hilt with an obscene grin, as if he were clutching his sex.

  ‘Be vigilant, Judges; for otherwise you may on this very day and in this very place inaugurate a second wave of proscriptions far more cruel and ruthless than the first. At least the first was directed against men who could defend themselves; the tragedy I foresee will be aimed at the children of the proscribed, at infant sons in their cradles! By the immortal gods, who knows where such an atrocity could lead this republic?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Glaucia said. ‘Finish what you were doing.’

  I dropped the hem of my tunic and turned to face him.

  Glaucia smiled. He slowly reached into his tunic, pulled out his knife, and toyed with it, dragging the sharp tip against the wall with a scraping noise that set my teeth on edge. ‘I mean it,’ he said, sounding very charitable. ‘Do you think I’d stab a man in the back while he was pissing?’

  ‘A reasonable point of honour,’ I agreed, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To kill you.’

  I sucked in a sharp breath, full of the smell of stale urine. ‘Now? Still?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He stopped scraping and touched the point of the blade to his fingertip. A bead of blood welled up from the flesh. Glaucia sucked it clean.

  ‘Judges, it behoves wise men, furnished with the authority you possess, to apply the surest remedies to the lingering ills of this republic… .’

  ‘But why? The trial is almost over.’

  Instead of answering he continued to suck his thumb and recommenced scraping the blade against the wall. He stared at me like a demented child, monstrously overgrown. The knife in my tunic was a good match for his, but I judged his arm to be two hands longer. The odds were not good.

  ‘Why kill me? No matter what happens now, nothing you do to me can change matters. My part in this affair was over days ago. It was the slave who struck your head the other night, if that’s what you’re angry about. You have no grudge against me, Mallius Glaucia. You have no reason to kill me. No reason at all.’

  He quit scraping the blade. He stopped sucking his thumb. He looked at me very earnestly. ‘But I’ve already told you: I want to kill you. Are you going to finish pissing or not?’

  ‘There is not a man among you who does not know the reputation of the Roman people as merciful conquerors, lenient towards their foreign enemies; yet today Romans continue to turn on one another with shocking cruelty.’

  Glaucia stepped towards me. I stepped back against the wall, directly over the drain. A powerful stench of excreta and urine rose into my nostrils.

  He stepped closer. ‘Well? You don’t want them to find you with piss all over your toga, do you, along with all the blood?’

  A figure appeared behind him – another spectator come to use the drains. I thought Glaucia might glance around for just an instant, long enough so that I could rush him, perhaps kick him between the legs – but Glaucia only smiled at me and held up his blade so that the newcomer could see it. The stranger vanished without so much as a gasp.

  Glaucia shook his head. ‘Now I can’t give you a choice,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll have to make it quick.
’

  He was big. He was also clumsy. He lunged and I was able to elude him with surprising ease. I pulled out my own blade, thinking I might not have to use it after all, not if I could simply slip past him. I dashed for open ground, slipped on the piss-covered floor, and fell face-first onto the hard stones.

  The knife was jarred from my hand and went skidding away. I crawled desperately after it. It was still an arm’s length away when something enormously powerful struck my shoulders and knocked me flat.

  Glaucia kicked me in the ribs several times and then flipped me over. His grinning face, looming enormous as he descended on me, was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. So this is how it shall be, I thought: I shall die not as an old man with a toothless Bethesda crooning in my ear and the perfume of my garden in my nostrils, but choked by the stench of an unwashed latrine, with a hideous assassin drooling spittle on my face, and the echo of Cicero’s voice droning in my ears.

  There was a skittering sound, like a knife skipping over stones, and something sharp jabbed my side. I honestly believed, with the kind of faith reserved for the purist vestals, that my knife had somehow come skidding back to me, simply because I willed it to. I might have reached for it had I not been using both arms in a failing attempt to hold Glaucia off me. I stared into his eyes, fascinated by the sheer hatred I saw there. Suddenly he looked up, and in the next instant there was a stone the size of a bread loaf somehow attached to his bandaged forehead, as if it had popped out of his brain, like Minerva from Jupiter’s brow. It stayed there, as if glued to the spot by the blood that abruptly oozed about the connection – no, the stone was held there by the two hands that had brought it crashing down. I rolled up my eyes and saw Tiro upside-down against a blue sky above.

  He did not look happy to see me. He kept hissing something at me, over and over, until my hand (not my ear) finally apprehended the word knife. I somehow twisted my arm in an impossible backwards bend, snatched my knife from where Tiro had kicked it and snapped it upright before my chest. There is no word in Latin, but there should be one, for the weird sensation of recognition I felt, as if I had done the exact thing once before. Tiro lifted the heavy stone and brought it down again on Glaucia’s already smashed forehead, and the giant collapsed like a mountain on top of me, impaling his exploding heart upon the full length of Eco’s blade.