Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (4 page)

‘Finally he goes his way, leaving a smell in the foyer that Bethesda can’t eradicate with three days’ scrubbing, along with only two clues as to what he was talking about: the name Roscius, and the town of Amelia – did I know the one, had I ever been to the other? Roscius is the name of a famous comedian, of course, one of Sulla’s favourites, everybody knows that. But that’s not whom he meant. Ameria is a little town up in the Umbrian hill country, fifty miles or so north of Rome. Not much reason to go there, unless you want to take up farming. So my answer was no, and no again.

‘A day or two passed. Hortensius’s handyman didn’t come back. I was intrigued. A few questions here and there – it didn’t take much checking to uncover what it was all about: the parricide case upcoming at the Rostra. Sextus Roscius of the town of Ameria stands accused of plotting the murder of his own father here in Rome. Odd – no one seems to know much about the matter, but everyone tells me I’m better off staying clear of it. An ugly crime, they say, certain to be an ugly trial. I kept expecting Hortensius to contact me again, but his creature never reappeared. Two days ago I heard that Hortensius had withdrawn from the defence.’

I gave Tiro a sidelong glance. He kept his eyes on the ground as we walked, hardly looking at me, yet I could almost feel the intensity of his concentration. He was an excellent listener. Had he been other than a slave, what a fine pupil he would have made, I thought; and perhaps, in another life, in another world, I might have made a fine teacher of young men.

I shook my head. ‘Hortensius and his creature and this mysterious trial – I had put it out of my thoughts completely. Then you showed up at my door, telling me I’d been “recommended”. By whom? Possibly, I thought, by Hortensius, who seems to have thought it wiser to pass along the parricide case to someone else. To a younger advocate, probably, someone less experienced. A beginning lawyer who would be excited at the prospect of a major case, or at least a case with such a harrowing penalty. An advocate who wouldn’t know any better – who wouldn’t be in a position to know whatever it is that Hortensius knows. Once you confirmed that it was Hortensius who’d recommended me, it was simple to proceed to the final pronouncement, steered along at every turn by the reactions on your face – which, by the way, is as clear and easy to read as Cato’s Latin.’ I shrugged. ‘To some extent, logic. To some extent, a hunch. I’ve learned to use both in my line of work.’

We walked along in silence for a moment. Then Tiro smiled and laughed. ‘So you do know why I’ve come. And you know what I was to ask you. I hardly have to say a word. You make it very easy.’

I shrugged and spread my hands in a typical Roman gesture of false modesty.

Tiro furrowed his brow. ‘Now if only I could read
your
thoughts – but I’m afraid that will take some practice. Or does the fact that you’ve treated me so well already mean that you agree – that you’ll lend your services as Cicero needs them? He understands from Hortensius how you work, the fees you’ll expect. Will you do it?’

‘Do what? I’m afraid my mind reading stops here. You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘Will you come?’

‘Where?’

‘To Cicero’s house.’ Seeing the blank expression on my face, Tiro searched for a clearer explanation. ‘To meet him. To discuss the case.’

This stopped me so abruptly that my scraping sandals actually raised a small cloud of dust. ‘Your master truly is ignorant of decorum, isn’t he? He asks me to his house. Asks
me
, Gordianus the Finder? As a guest? How strange. Yes, I think I very much want to meet this Marcus Tullius Cicero. Heaven knows he needs my help. What a strange one he must be. Yes, of course I’ll come. Just allow me to change into something more appropriate. My toga, I suppose. And shoes, then, not sandals. It will only take a moment. Bethesda!
Bethesda!
’

II

The journey from my house on the Esquiline Hill to that of Cicero, close by the Capitoline, would take more than an hour of steady walking. It had probably taken Tiro half that time to reach my door, but Tiro had set out at dawn. We left at the busiest hour of the morning, when the streets of Rome are flooded with humanity, all stirred into wakefulness by the perpetual engines of hunger, obedience, and greed.

One sees more household slaves on the streets at that hour than at any other time of day. They scurry about the city on a million morning errands, conveying messages, carrying packages, fetching sundries, shopping from market to market. They carry with them the heavy scent of bread, baked fresh in a thousand stone ovens around the city, each oven sending up its slender tendril of smoke like a daily offering to the gods. They carry the scent of fish, freshwater varieties captured nearby in the Tiber, or else more exotic species transported overnight upriver from the port at Ostia – mud-caked molluscs and great fish of the sea, slithering octopi and squid. They carry the scent of blood that oozes from the severed limbs and breasts and carefully extracted organs of cattle, chicken, pigs, and sheep, wrapped in cloth and slung over their shoulders, destined for their masters’ tables and their masters’ already bloated bellies.

No other city I know can match the sheer vitality of Rome at the hour just before mid-morning. Rome wakes with a self-satisfied stretching of the limbs and a deep inhalation, stimulating the lungs, quickening the pulse. Rome wakes with a smile, roused from pleasant dreams, for every night Rome goes to sleep dreaming a dream of empire. In the morning Rome opens her eyes, ready to go about the business of making that dream come true in broad daylight. Other cities cling to sleep – Alexandria and Athens to warm dreams of the past, Pergamum and Antioch to a coverlet of Oriental splendour, little Pompeii and Herculaneum to the luxury of napping till noon. Rome is happy to shake off sleep and begin her agenda for the day. Rome has work to do. Rome is an early riser.

Rome is multiple cities in one. On any given hour’s journey across it, one will see at least several of its guises. To the eyes of those who look at a city and see faces, it is first and foremost a city of slaves, for the slaves far outnumber citizens and freedmen. Slaves are everywhere, as ubiquitous and as vital to the life of the city as the waters of the Tiber or the light of the sun. Slaves are the lifeblood of Rome.

They are of every race and condition. Some spring from a stock indistinguishable from their masters. They walk the streets better dressed and more finely groomed than many a free man; they may lack the toga of a citizen, but their tunics are made of material just as fine. Others are unimaginably wretched, like the pockmarked, half-idiot labourers one sees winding through the streets in ragged files, naked except for a cloth to cover their sex, joined by chains at the ankles and bearing heavy weights, kept in line by bullies with long whips and further tormented by the clouds of flies that follow wherever they go. They hurry to the mines, or to galleys, or to dig the deep foundations of a rich man’s house on their way to an early grave.

To those who look at a city and see not humanity but stone, Rome is overwhelmingly a city of worship. Rome has always been a pious place, sacrificing abundantly (if not always sincerely) to any and every god and hero who might become an ally in the dream of empire. Rome worships the gods; Rome gives adoration to the dead. Temples, altars, shrines, and statues abound. Incense may abruptly waft from any corner. One may step down a narrow winding street in a neighbourhood known since childhood and suddenly come upon a landmark never noticed before – a tiny, crude statue of some forgotten Etruscan god set in a niche and concealed behind a wild fennel bush, a secret known only to the children who play in the alley and the inhabitants of the house, who worship the forsaken and impotent god as a household deity. Or one may come upon an entire temple, unimaginably ancient, so old it is made not of bricks and marble but of worm-eaten wood, its dim interior long ago stripped of all clues of the divinity that once resided there, but still held sacred for reasons no one living can remember.

Other sights are more specialized to their region. Consider my own neighbourhood, with its odd mixture of death and desire. My home sits partway up the Esquiline Hill. Above me is the quarter of the morgue workers, those who tend the flesh of the dead – embalmers, perfume rubbers, stokers of the flame. Day and night a massive column of smoke rises from the summit, thicker and blacker than any other in this city of smoke, and carrying that strangely appealing odour of seared flesh otherwise found only on battlefields. Below my house, at the foot of the hill, is the notorious Subura, the greatest concentration of taverns, gaming houses, and brothels west of Alexandria. The proximity of such disparate neighbours – purveyors of death on one hand and of life’s basest pleasures on the other – can lead to strange juxtapositions.

Tiro and I descended the paved footpath that dropped steeply from my front door, passing the blank plaster walls of my neighbours. ‘Be careful here,’ I told him, pointing out the spot where I knew a fresh load of excrement would be waiting, slopped over the wall by the inhabitants of the house on the left. Tiro skipped to his right, barely avoiding the pile, and wrinkled his nose.

‘That wasn’t there when I came up the steps,’ he laughed.

‘No, it looks quite fresh. The mistress of the house,’ I explained with a sigh, ‘comes from some backward little town in Samnium. A million times I’ve explained to her how the public sewers work, but she only answers: “This is the way we did it in Pluto’s Hole,” or whatever her stinking little town is called. It never stays long; sometime during the day the man who lives behind the wall on the right has one of his slaves collect the stuff and cart it off. I don’t know why; the path leads only to my door – I’m the only one who has to look at it, and the only one likely to step in it. Maybe the smell offends him. Maybe he steals it to fertilize his gardens. I only know it’s one of life’s predictable routines – the lady from Pluto’s Hole will throw her family’s shit over the wall every morning; the man across the way will carry it off before nightfall.’ I gave Tiro my warmest smile. ‘I explain this to anyone who’s likely to visit me between sunrise and sunset. Otherwise you’re likely to ruin a perfectly good pair of shoes.’

The pathway broadened. The houses became smaller and drew closer together. At last we reached the foot of the Esquiline and stepped into the wide avenue of the Subura Way. A group of gladiators, heads shaved except for barbaric topknots, came staggering out of the Lair of Venus. The Lair is notorious for cheating its customers, especially visitors to Rome, but natives as well, which is one of the reasons I’ve never patronized it, despite its convenient proximity to my house. Cheated or not, the gladiators seemed satisfied. They staggered into the street grasping one another’s shoulders for support and bellowing out a song that had as many tunes as there were voices to sing it, still drunk after what must have been a very long night of debauchery.

At the edge of the street a group of young trigon players broke and scattered to get out of the gladiators’ way, then reformed to begin a fresh round, each taking his turn at the points of a triangle drawn in the dust. They slapped the leather ball back and forth, laughing loudly. They were hardly more than boys, but I’d seen them going in and out of the side entrance to the Lair often enough to know that they were employed there. It was a testament to the energy of youth that they should be up and playing so early, after a long night’s work in the brothel.

We turned right, proceeding westward along the Subura Way, following the drunken gladiators. Another road descending from the Esquiline emptied into a broad intersection ahead. A rule in Rome: the wider the street or the greater the square, the more crowded and impassable it will be. Tiro and I were forced to walk in single file, threading our way through the sudden congestion of carts and animals and makeshift markets. I quickened my pace and called back at him to keep up; soon we caught up with the gladiators. Predictably, the crowd parted for them like mist before a heavy gust of wind. Tiro and I followed in their wake.

‘Make way!’ a loud voice suddenly called. ‘Make way for the dead!’ A cluster of white-robed embalmers pressed in upon our right, coming down from the Esquiline. They pushed a long, narrow cart bearing a body that was wrapped in gauze and seemed to float in a cocoon of fragrances – attar of roses, unguent of clove, unnameable Oriental spices. As always the smell of smoke clung to their clothing, mixed with the odour of burning flesh from the vast crematoria up on the hill.

‘Make way!’ their leader shouted, brandishing a slender wooden rod of the sort one might use to discipline mildly a dog or a slave. He struck nothing but empty air, but the gladiators took offence. One of them slapped the rod from the embalmer’s hand. It flew spinning through the air and would have struck me in the face had I not ducked. I heard a squeal of painful surprise behind me, but didn’t bother to look. I stayed low and reached for Tiro’s sleeve.