Roman Blood (31 page)

201

TWENTY-TWO

" C L E A R L Y , " I said, "the message was meant as a warning to
you,

Cicero."

"But if he intended to murder you and your slave, why didn't he get the bloodshed over with first? Why didn't he go ahead and kill you in your sleep and then write the message?"

I shrugged. "Because he already had enough blood at hand, pouring out of Zoticus's slashed throat. Because the house was still, and he had no fear that I would wake. Because by having the message already written, in case there was some unforeseen complication or if we died screaming, he could flee the house immediately. Or perhaps he was waiting for another assassin to join him. I don't know, Cicero, I can't speak for a dead man. But he meant to kill me, of that I'm certain. And the warning was for y o u . "

The moon had fallen. The night was at its darkest, though dawn could not be far off. Bethesda was somewhere in the slave quarters, fast asleep, I hoped. Rufus, Tiro, and I sat together in Cicero's study surrounded by sputtering braziers. Our host paced back and forth, grimacing and rubbing his chin.

His face was haggard and his jaw was covered with stubble, but his eyes were bright and glittering, far from sleepy—so he had looked when Bethesda and I had come rapping at his door after fleeing across half the 202

city in the middle of the night. Remarkably, Cicero had still been awake and his house brightly lit. A puffy-eyed slave had led us to the study, where Cicero paced with a sheaf of parchment in his hands, reading aloud and drinking from a bowl of steaming leek soup—Hortensius's secret recipe for sweetening the voice.

With Tiro transcribing, he had almost finished his first provisional draft of his oration in defense of Sextus Roscius, having worked at it ceaselessly all night. He had been trying it out for Tiro and Rufus when we arrived, blood-soaked and shivering, at his door.

Bethesda had quickly disappeared, huddled against Cicero's chief housekeeper, who promised to take care of her. Cicero had insisted that I wash and put on a fresh tunic before I did anything else. I had done the best I could, but in the lamplight of his study I kept noticing tiny flecks of dried blood on my fingernails and bare feet.

" S o now there are two dead bodies in your house," Cicero said, rolling his eyes. " A h , well, I'll send someone over tomorrow to take care of the corpses. More expenses! No doubt the owner of this Zoticus won't be pleased at having a dead body returned to him; there'll have to be a settlement. You're like a bottomless well I keep pitching coins into, Gordianus."

"This message," Rufus interrupted, looking pensive, " h o w did it read again, exactly?"

I shut my eyes and saw each word in vivid red, lit by a wavering lamp:

"The fool disobeyed. Now he is dead. Let a wiser man take a holiday come the holy Ides of May.' He also appeared to have been touching up the older message with fresh blood."

"Quite meticulous," said Cicero.

"Yes, and a better speller than Mallius Glaucia. His letters were well made, and he seems to have been working not from paper but from memory. A slave from a better class of master."

"They say Chrysogonus keeps gladiators who can read and write," said Rufus.

" Y e s , too bad you had to kill this Redbeard," Cicero said reproach-fully. "Otherwise we might have learned who sent him."

'But he said he came from you, Cicero."

" Y o u needn't take that sarcastic tone, Gordianus. Of course I didn't send him. You were to hire a bodyguard on your own and I would pay, that was our agreement. To be quite honest, I forgot about the arrange-203

merit entirely once you were gone. I started working on my notes for the defense and didn't give it another thought."

" A n d yet, when he came to my door, he distinctly told my slave that he had been sent by you. It was a deliberate ruse, calculated to deceive me; that means whoever sent him
knew
of the arrangement we had made only hours before, that you would pay for a single guard to protect my house. How can that be, Cicero? The only people who knew of that discussion were the same ones who are in this room at this moment."

I stared at Rufus. He blushed and lowered his eyes. Love frustrated may turn to hate, and thwarted desire may long for vengeance. All along he had been a viper, I thought, entrusted with the heart of Cicero's strategy and meanwhile plotting its perversion. You can never trust a noble, I thought, no matter how young and innocent he may appear.

Somehow the enemies of Sextus Roscius had twisted his motives to their own ends. He had actually been willing to sacrifice my life and that of Sextus Roscius to see Cicero brought low—it seemed impossible, looking at his boyish face and freckled nose, but of such stuff are Romans made.

I was about to accuse him out loud and expose his secrets—his hidden passion for Cicero, his treachery—but at that instant whatever god had saved my life that night chose to save my honor as well, and I was spared from humiliating myself before a generous client and his highborn admirer.

Tiro made a stifled, choking noise, as if he tried to clear his throat and failed.

As one we turned to look at him. His face was the very image of guilt—blinking, blushing, gnawing his lip.

" T i r o ? " Cicero's voice was high and hoarse, despite the leek soup. Yet his face betrayed only mild consternation, as if reserving judgment in expectation of a quite simple and satisfactory explanation.

Rufus glanced at me with fire in his eyes, as if to say: And how could you have doubted
me?
" Y e s , Tiro," he said, folding his arms and looking down his freckled nose. " I s there something you wish to explain to us?"

He was more haughty than I could have imagined him. That cold, implacable gaze—is it a mask all nobles carry with them for use at a moment's notice, or is it the one true face they show when all their other masks have fallen away?

Tiro bit his knuckles and began to weep. Suddenly I knew the truth.

" T h e girl," I whispered. " R o s c i a . "

Tiro hid his face and sobbed aloud.

204

Cicero was furious. He paced the room like a wolf. There were times, as he passed by Tiro, who sat meekly wringing his hands and sniffling, when I thought he would actually strike the poor slave. Instead he threw his hands in the air and shouted at the top of his lungs until he was so hoarse he could hardly speak.

Occasionally Rufus tried to interpose himself, taking on the role of the all-comprehending, all-forgiving noble. He wore the part uneasily. " B u t , Cicero, such things happen all the time. Besides, Caecilia need never know." He reached up to take Cicero by the hand, but Cicero angrily snatched his arm away, blind to Rufus's pained reaction.

"While her household laughs at her behind her back? No, no, Caecilia may have been fooled, just as I was fooled, but you don't think her slaves weren't onto it? There's nothing worse, nothing, than having a scandal take place beneath the very nose of a Roman matron while her slaves laugh behind her back. And to think that I brought such shame into her house! I can never face her again."

Tiro sniffled and flinched as Cicero swept by. I scratched at the blood on my fingernails and winced at the first intimations of a headache. The light in the atrium showed the first faint blush of dawn.

"Whip him if you must, Cicero. Or have him strangled," I said. "It's your right, after all, and no man would object. But save your voice for the trial. By shouting you only punish Rufus and m e . "

Cicero went rigid and scowled at me. At least I had put a stop to his constant pacing.

"Tiro may have acted stupidly and even immorally," I went on. " O r it may be that he simply acted like any young man eager for love. But there is no reason to believe that he betrayed you, betrayed us, at least knowingly. He was duped. It's a very old story."

For a moment Cicero seemed to grow calm, drawing deep breaths and staring at the floor. Then he exploded again. " H o w many times?" he demanded, throwing his hands in the air. " H o w many?" We had already gone over this, but the number of times seemed particularly to irritate him.

"Five, I think. Maybe six," Tiro answered meekly, just as he had answered every other time Cicero asked the same question.

"Beginning with the first time, the very first time I visited Caecilia Metella's house. How could you have done such a thing? And then, to 205

have gone on doing it in secret, behind my back, behind the backs of her father and her father's patroness, in her very house! Had you no sense of decency? Of propriety? What if you had been discovered? I would have had no choice but to have given you the direst punishment on the spot! And I would have been held accountable. Her father could have brought suit against me, could have ruined m e . " His voice had grown so hoarse and grating it made me wince to hear it.

"Hardly likely," Rufus yawned, "considering his circumstances."

"That makes no difference! Really, Tiro, I see no way out of this.

Every suitable punishment I can think of is so severe that it makes me shudder. And yet I see no alternative."

" Y o u could always forgive him," I suggested, rubbing my sore eyes.

" N o ! No, no, no! If Tiro were some simple, ignorant laborer, a slave from the bottom rung, a man hardly better than a beast, then his behavior might be excusable—he would still have to be punished, of course, but at least the crime would be comprehensible. But Tiro is an educated slave, more knowledgeable in the laws than many a citizen. What he did with the young Roscia was not the act of an ignorant creature of impulse, but the conscious choice of a well-taught slave whose master has clearly been much too lenient and much, much too trusting."

" O h , in the name of Jupiter, stop, Cicero!" Rufus had finally reached his limit. I closed my eyes and rendered a prayer of thanks to the unseen gods that it was Rufus who had finally spoken and not me, for I had been biting my tongue so hard it nearly bled. "Can't you see this is useless?

Whatever crime Tiro has committed, it's known only to those of us in this room, and to no one else who cares, at least so long as the girl keeps her mouth shut. It's a matter to be handled between you and your slave.

Sleep on it and put it out of your mind until after the trial, and meanwhile simply see that he's kept away from the girl. As Gordianus says, save your voice and your anger for more important matters, such as saving Sextus Roscius. What matters now is discovering what Tiro told her and how the information got to our enemies."

" A n d why the girl would betray her own father." I looked wearily at Tiro. "Perhaps you have some idea about that."

Tiro looked meekly at Cicero, as if to see whether he had permission to speak or even breathe. For a moment Cicero seemed on the verge of another outburst. Instead he only cursed and turned toward the dimly glowing atrium, tightly hugging himself as if to contain his fury.

206

"Well, T i r o ? "

" I t still seems impossible," he said softly, shaking his head. "Perhaps I'm mistaken. It's only, when you said it had to be someone in this room who betrayed you, I thought to myself, not me, I've told no one, and then I realized I had told Roscia . . ."

"Just as you told her all about me on the day I first interviewed Sextus Roscius," I said.

" Y e s . "

" A n d the very next day Mallius Glaucia and another of Magnus's thugs came to my house to frighten me off the case, killing my cat and leaving their message in its blood. Yes, it seems to me quite likely that your Roscia is the leak in our vessel."

"But how? She loves her father. She would do anything to help him."

"This is what she tells y o u ? "

"Yes. That was why she was always pressing me with questions about the investigation, asking what Cicero was doing to help her father. Sextus Roscius always made her leave the room when he talked business and wouldn't tell her or her mother anything. She couldn't stand not knowing."

" A n d so, in between, or during, or after your hurried little trysts, she plied you with detailed questions about her father's defense."

" Y e s . But you make it sound so sinister, so awkward and artificial."

" O h , no, I'm sure she's as smooth as burnished gold."

" Y o u make her sound like an actor." He lowered his voice and glanced toward Cicero, who had turned his back and stepped into the atrium.

" O r like a whore."

I laughed. " N o t like a whore, Tiro. You should know better than that." I saw him blush and look again toward Cicero, as if he expected me to mention Electra now and destroy him even further in his master's eyes. " N o , " I said, "the motivations of a whore are always transparent, comprehensible precisely because they are suspect, bewitching only to a genuine fool, or to a man who devoutly wishes to be fooled." I rose from my chair, walked stiffly across the room, and laid my hand on his shoulder. "But even the wise may be taken in by that which seems young and innocent and fair. Especially if they are young and innocent themselves."

Tiro glanced toward the atrium, where Cicero had stepped out of earshot. " D o you really think that's
all
she wanted from me, Gordianus?

Just a way to find out what I knew?"

207

I thought of what I had seen that first day at Caecilia's, of the look on the girl's face and the yearning arch of her naked body against the wall. I thought of the little leer that had flashed in the eyes of young Lucius Megarus at the memory of her stay in his father's house in Ameria. " N o , not entirely. If you mean, did she feel nothing at all when she was with you, I doubt that very much. Trust is seldom entirely pure, and neither is deceit."

" I f she was collecting information," Rufus said, "perhaps she was passing it on in some innocent way herself. There might be a slave in the household she confides in, some spy placed there by Chrysogonus who plies her with questions the same way she plies Tiro."

I shook my head. "I don't think so. Tell me if I'm right, Tiro. So far you've only managed to see her whenever you could accompany one of us on an errand to Caecilia's house, correct?"