Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (61 page)

He turned, and as he left he took a deep breath and shivered, the way dogs shiver to dry themselves, as if I had left a residue of ill will and disbelief on him and he did not wish to reenter his master’s presence stained by my pollution.

‘I don’t understand you, either,’ said Bethesda softly, looking up from her sewing. ‘Why do you taunt the boy? It’s obvious that he admires you. Why do you make him choose between his master and you? You know that’s unfair.’

It was a rare thing for Bethesda to chide me in such open terms. Was my behaviour so blatantly inappropriate that even my slave felt free to criticize it? I had nothing to say in my defence. Bethesda saw that she had pricked me and made a further sally.

‘If you have a quarrel with Cicero, it makes no sense to punish his slave for it. Why not go to Cicero directly? But I must confess, I don’t understand your attitude any better than the boy. Cicero has been only fair and reasonable at every turn, at least so far as I can see; no, more than fair. Not like the other men you work for. He’s taken you into his household for your own protection, along with your slave – imagine that! He’s fed you, opened his library to you, even posted a guard to look after you from the roof. Try to imagine your good client Hortensius’s doing that! I wonder what the inside of Hortensius’s house looks like, and how many slaves he owns? But I suppose I shall never know.’

Bethesda put down her handiwork. She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked about the courtyard, noting the decorations and flourishes as if they had been installed especially for her approval. I didn’t bother to reprimand her for speaking out of hand. What did the opinions of a slave matter, after all – except that, as always, she had spoken the very doubts and questions that were spinning in my own head.

XXX

The Ides of May dawned with a pale blue light. I woke in slow stages, dislocated from my dreams and disoriented in a strange house – neither my house on the Esquiline nor any of the houses I had passed through in a lifetime of restless travel. Hushed, hurried voices penetrated the room from every quarter. Why should any house be so busy so very early in the morning? I kept thinking that someone must have died during the night, but in that case I would have been awakened by sobbing and lamentations.

Bethesda was pressed against my back with one arm slipped beneath my own, hugging my chest. I felt the soft, full cushion of her breasts against my back, pressing gently against me with each breath. Her exhalation was warm and sweet against the back of my ear. I began to wake and resisted it, in the way that men cling to even a troubled sleep when a dull despair hangs over them. I felt content with my own unhappy dreams and altogether apathetic about whatever hushed crisis was brewing in the strange house around me. I shut my eyes and turned the dawn back into darkest night.

I opened my eyes again. Bethesda, fully dressed, was standing over me and shaking my shoulder. The room was filled with yellow light.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she was saying. I sat up at once and shook my head. ‘Are you sick? No? Then I think you’d better hurry. All the others have already gone.’ She filled a cup with cool water and handed it to me. ‘I had thought they must have forgotten you entirely, until Tiro came running back and asked me where you were. When I told him I’d tried to wake you twice already and you were still in bed, he just threw up his hands and went running after his master.’

‘How long ago was this?’

She shrugged. ‘Only a little while. But you won’t be able to catch them, not if you take time to wash yourself and eat something. Tiro said not to worry, he’d save you a place beside him at the Rostra.’ She took the empty cup from me and smiled. ‘I had a look at the woman.’

‘What woman?’ The image of Electra flashed in my mind; it seemed I had dreamed about her, though I couldn’t quite remember. ‘And surely I have a clean tunic?’

She pointed to a chair in the corner where my best clothes had been laid out. One of Cicero’s slaves must have fetched them from my house. The tunic was spotless. A rent corner in the hem of my toga had been newly restitched. Even my shoes had been freshly scrubbed and polished with oil.

‘The woman,’ Bethesda said again. ‘The one they call Caecilia.’

‘Caecilia Metella was here? This morning?’

‘She arrived just after dawn in a very grand litter. There was such a commotion among the slaves that the noise got me out of bed. She’s let you inside her house twice, hasn’t she? It must be very grand.’

‘It is. She came alone? I mean, with only her retinue?’

‘No, the man came as well; Sextus Roscius. Flanked by six guards with their swords drawn.’ She paused and looked remote, as if trying to recall important details. ‘One of the guards was extremely handsome.’

I sat on the bed to fasten the leather straps of my shoes. ‘I don’t suppose you noticed Roscius himself?’

‘I did.’

‘And how did he look?’

‘Very pale. Of course, the light was weak.’

‘Not so weak that you couldn’t see the guard well enough.’

‘I could have seen the guard well enough in the dark.’

‘I’m sure you could have. Now help me arrange my toga.’

The Forum had the unsettled feeling of a half-holiday. Since it was the Ides, both the people’s Comitia and the Curia of the Senate were closed. But a number of moneylenders and bankers had their offices open, and while the outlying pathways were empty, as I drew towards the centre of the Forum the streets became increasingly congested. Men of all classes, alone or in groups, were making their way towards the Rostra with an air of sombre excitement. The crowd that thronged the open square around the Rostra itself was so thick that I had to elbow my way through. There is nothing that thrills a Roman like a trial, especially when it promises to end in someone’s ruin.

In the midst of the crowd I passed a sumptuous litter with its curtains drawn shut. As I stepped alongside, a hand shot through the hangings and gripped my forearm. I glanced down, amazed that so withered a limb could command such strength. The hand released me and withdrew, leaving behind the clear indentations of five sharp fingernails. The curtains parted and the same hand beckoned me to stick my head inside.

Caecilia Metella, reclined upon a bed of plush cushions, was wearing a loose purple gown and a necklace of pearls. Her high, coiled hair was held in place by a silver needle decorated at the head with a cluster of lapis. At her right shoulder, sitting cross-legged, was the eunuch Ahausarus.

‘What do you think, young man?’ she asked in a hoarse whisper. ‘How will it go?’

‘For whom? Cicero? Sulla? The assassins?’

She furrowed her brow and frowned. ‘Don’t be facetious. For young Sextus Roscius, of course.’

‘Hard to say. Only augurs and oracles can read the future.’

‘But with all Cicero’s hard work, and with Rufus to help him, surely Roscius will receive the verdict he deserves.’

‘How can I answer, when I don’t know what that verdict should be?’

She looked at me darkly and touched her long, henna-stained nails to her lips. ‘What are you saying? After all you’ve learned of the truth, you can’t believe he’s guilty. Can you?’ Her voice trembled.

‘Like every good citizen,’ I said, ‘I put my faith in Roman justice.’ I pulled back my head and let the curtain drop.

Somewhere near the centre of the crowd I heard a voice call my name. At that particular moment it seemed very unlikely that anyone who knew me could wish me well; I pressed on, but a group of broad-shouldered labourers blocked my way. A hand gripped my shoulder. I took a deep breath and turned slowly around.

At first I didn’t recognize him, having seen him only on his farm, weary from the day’s work with dirt on his tunic, or else relaxed and full of wine. Titus Megarus of Ameria looked altogether different, wearing a fine toga, with his hair carefully oiled and combed. His son Lucius, not yet old enough for a toga, was dressed in modest long sleeves. His expression was one of rapturous excitement.

‘Gordianus, what a piece of luck that I should find you in this crowd! You don’t know how good it is for a country farmer to see a familiar face in the city—’

‘It’s fantastic!’ Lucius interrupted. ‘What a place – I could never have imagined it. So big, so beautiful. And all the people. Which part of the city do you live in? It must be wonderful to live in such a place, where so much is always happening.’

‘You’ll forgive his manners, I hope.’ Titus fondly brushed an unruly forelock from his son’s brow. ‘At his age I’d never been to Rome either. Of course I’ve only been here three times in my life – no, four, but once it was only for a day. See over there, Lucius, just as I told you, the Rostra itself – that giant pedestal decorated with the prows of Carthaginian ships taken in battle. The speaker mounts it from stairs around the back, then addresses the audience from the platform on top, where everyone in the square can see him. I once heard the tribune Sulpicius himself speak from the Rostra, in the days before the civil wars.’

I stared at him blankly. On his farm in Ameria I had been struck by his graciousness and charm, by his air of wholesome refinement. Here in the Forum he was as out of his element as a fish out of water, pointing and yammering like any country bumpkin.

‘How long have you been in the city?’ I finally said.

‘Only since last night. We rode from Ameria in two days.’

‘Two very long and hard days.’ Lucius laughed, pretending to massage his bottom.

‘Then you haven’t yet seen Cicero?’

Titus lowered his eyes. ‘No, I’m afraid not. But I did manage to find the stables in the Subura and return Vespa to her owner.’

‘But I thought you were going to arrive yesterday. You were going to come to Cicero’s house, to let him interview you, to see if he could use you as a witness.’

‘Yes, well . . .’

‘It’s too late now.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Titus shrugged and looked away.

‘I see.’ I stepped back. Titus Megarus would not look me in the eye. ‘But you decided to come to the trial anyway. Just to observe.’

His mouth tightened. ‘Sextus Roscius is – was – my neighbour. I have more reason to be here than most of these people.’

‘And more reason to help him.’

Titus lowered his voice. ‘I’ve helped him already – the petition to Sulla, talking to you. But to speak out publicly, here in Rome – I’m a father, don’t you understand? I have a family to consider.’

‘And if they find him guilty and execute him, I suppose you’ll stay for that as well.’

‘I’ve never seen a monkey,’ said Lucius happily. ‘Do you suppose they’ll really sew him up in a bag—’

‘Yes,’ I said to Titus, ‘be sure to bring the boy to see it. A sight I’m sure he’ll never forget.’

Titus gave me a pained, imploring look. Lucius meanwhile was gazing at something beyond my shoulder, oblivious to everything but the excitement of the trial and the glories of the Forum. I turned quickly and slipped into the crowd. Behind me I heard Lucius cry out in his clear, boyish voice, ‘Father, call him back – how will we ever find him again?’ But Titus Megarus did not call my name.

The crowd suddenly compressed as an unseen dignitary arrived, preceded by a retinue of gladiators who cleared a path straight to the judges’ tiers beyond the Rostra. I found myself trapped in an eddy of bodies, pushed back until my shoulders struck something as solid and unyielding as a wall – the pedestal of a statue that rose like an island from the sea of bodies.

I looked upwards over my shoulder, into the flaring nostrils of a gilded war horse. Seated on the back of the beast was the dictator himself, dressed as a general but with his head uncovered so that nothing obscured his jubilant face. The glittering, smiling warrior atop his steed was considerably younger than the man I had seen in the house of Chrysogonus, but the sculptor had done a credible job in capturing the strong jaw of the original, along with the imperturbable, terrible self-confidence of his eyes. Those eyes gazed out not over the Forum or down onto the crowd or into the judges’ tiers, but directly at the speaker’s stand atop the Rostra, putting whoever might dare to mount it eye to eye with the state’s supreme protector. I stepped back and looked at the pedestal’s inscription, which read simply: L. CORNELIUS SULLA, DICTATOR, EVER FORTUNATE.