The Folding Knife (25 page)

"I see," Basso said. "Thanks. So, what should I call you?"

She stood up. "Melsuntha will do fine," she said. "We're both used to it by now. Is that everything for today?"

The refusals were, for the most part, perfectly polite; she was still rather young to be thinking about marriage, or she was already as good as betrothed to someone else, or they were deeply flattered and honoured that the First Citizen should consider their daughter in that light, but perhaps the difference in ages--

"The hell with that," Basso growled. "She's three years younger than me. You'd have thought they'd have done anything to get her off their hands."

Melsuntha didn't seem to have heard him. "There's also a list of seventeen character flaws."

"Hers or mine?"

"Hers. She's frivolous, easily bored, and she bites her fingernails."

"That's a bad habit," Basso pointed out, "not a character flaw."

"But possibly symptomatic of a deep-seated neurosis," she replied. "Anyway, they feel she's entirely unsuitable, and therefore feel obliged to decline."

Basso sighed. "Just as well," he said. "I remember her as a child. She used to pick the petals off flowers. I always thought that was a stupid thing to do."

"That's all so far," Melsuntha said. "We're still waiting to hear from the Quintillii, the Metelli and the Sulpicii, though I can't say I hold out much hope. If they were at all interested--"

"I'm not surprised," Basso said, looking away. "After all, I killed my first wife. Who the hell's going to make their daughter marry me?"

She looked at him. "In my country," she said, "you would have incurred social stigma if you hadn't killed them."

"Really." He looked right back at her. "Then I'm very glad I don't live there."

He'd offended her, in so far as that was possible. He felt slightly ashamed. "Private justice is frowned on here," he said. "What I should have done is sue for a divorce, claiming her dowry as forfeit for gross misconduct, and sued my brother-in-law for seducing my wife, for which I'd have got substantial damages. But he came at me with a knife, so what could I do?"

She didn't point out the flaw in that argument; she didn't need to, just as she wouldn't need to point out the sun on a cloudless day. "Even so," she said, "I fail to see why your unhappy past should stand in the way of a second marriage. You aren't the same man you were then."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "How would you know?"

"I don't believe you would act the same way were the situation to arise again."

He frowned at her. "Congratulations," he said, "on your mastery of the subjunctive. Seems to me, the only people who know how to use it properly these days are foreigners. Also, you're talking rubbish. You don't know the first thing about me."

She stood up to leave. "Thank you," she said, "for the compliment. I am quite proud of my competence in your language. For example, I can tell the difference in nuance between 'I believe there's nothing you can't do' and 'I believe you're capable of anything'. Both of which," she added, "are true. Good afternoon."

After she'd gone, he smiled.

The House, of its own motion, voted Basso the titles "Saviour of the People" and "Father of His Country", in recognition of his actions during the plague emergency. He wrote a formal letter of thanks, which was read in his absence, but politely refused to allow a service of investiture and thanksgiving in Temple. The remark attributed to him on hearing of these honours--"If I'm the father of the country, no wonder people abroad say all Vesani are bastards"--is probably apocryphal; the earliest mention of it is to be found in Sertorius'
Commentaries
, written seventy years after the event.

"It bothers me, though," he said, at the end of a long and rather fraught cabinet meeting, during which tempers had frayed and been patched up two or three times. "Saviour of the people, for crying out loud. We now know that everything we did was useless."

"True," Sentio said. "But at least you did something."

"Something useless."

"You did
something
, though," Sentio insisted. "You did a
lot
. People appreciate that."

"Think of the last major dose of plague we had," Cinio pointed out. "They were dropping like flies in the streets, you couldn't get a cart up Cornmarket for the piles of dead bodies, and all First Citizen Macrianus could think about was making sure nobody came within five hundred yards of his front door. He had the army out shooting arrows at people."

Basso shrugged. "So as long as I
do
things, it doesn't matter if they're a waste of time and money. That's--"

"That's what people expect of you," Cinio said. "It helps if it doesn't actually make things worse, of course, but what counts is action. As you well know," he added. "Just as you know that you've got to be gracious about fancy titles when you're given them, or they'll say you're arrogant."

Basso sighed. "The stupid thing is," he said, "I actually would quite like to be called something. You know, like Hanno the Great or Meo the Wise. It's fatuous and really rather pathetic, but there it is. I'd even settle for Basso the Deaf, so long as people thought of it for themselves."

Lanio, the trade commissioner, raised an eyebrow. "You surprise me," he said. "I've always assumed the line was, 'I do what I believe is right and I don't give a damn what people think.' I've always assumed that's why you're so popular. People like that sort of attitude."

"It cuts both ways, remember," put in Dorico, the chief agent. "Take your man Aelius, for instance. He'll be Cowshit to the end of his days, long after everyone's forgotten that a victory went with it."

"Let's talk about something else," Basso said.

"All right," Cinio replied. "How about the labour shortage? We still haven't decided anything," he went on, raising his voice above the groans of his colleagues. "And unless we do something now--"

"Like you were saying just now," Sentio interrupted. "Do something, even if it's pointless. The phantom of achievement, swathed in the illusion of activity."

Cinio turned to look at him. "Yours?"

Sentio shook his head. "Marcianus," he replied, "
On Citizenship
. I'd have thought you'd have recognised it."

"I'm sorry," Cinio said, "I don't read that sort of thing."

"You quoted from it," Sentio replied. "Last month, in the--"

Basso cleared his throat. "Let me see if I've got this straight." They turned to look at him. "We all agree that the labour shortage caused by the plague can't be allowed to continue much longer. Cinio and Tullio and their friends want us to buy in slaves and either sell them on to businesses and private citizens at cost, or hire them out at sensible rates. Sentio, Dorico and the pump-house lobby" (Sentio frowned at this description) "object that the ratio of slaves and foreigners is already too high, and this'd tip it just a bit too far. Is that about it, or have I missed something?"

Sentio muttered something about gross oversimplification, but Basso ignored him. "You've been on at me all day to say what I think," he said, "and I've avoided the issue, which is why we're all still here instead of where we want to be. All right. I agree with both of you."

There was a short pause; then Dorico muttered, "That's a great help, I must say." Basso smiled at him.

"Sentio," he said, "doesn't object to the buying-in plan per se. He's just worried about the balance. Cinio's turning a blind eye to a perfectly valid point, but I think his approach is basically sound, though I'd disagree with one aspect of it." He hesitated, as though he wasn't quite sure he wanted to continue. Then he said: "I don't think we should bring in slaves. There are far too many as it is, and I think we're laying up trouble for the future. In fact, I believe we should be looking towards getting rid of slavery altogether; but" (he had to raise his voice a little at that point) "that's another bitter argument for another long and tiresome day. I think we should recruit free labour abroad and hire it out--Cinio's plan, but with a slight tweak."

There was a cold silence. Then Sentio said, "If I'm going deaf I'm in good company, but I thought I heard you say our objection was valid."

"It is." Basso nodded. "The balance is all wrong. Particularly now," he added, "since by a nasty quirk of statistics, we lost twice as many citizens as offcomers in the plague. Add to that the steady decline in the birth rate, and we've got to face the fact. There's a genuine risk that, sooner or later, we're going to run out of Vesani."

"There you are, then," Sentio snapped. "So you can't seriously be suggesting--"

Basso raised his left hand. These days, that was all it was good for. "We have a shortage of Vesani citizens," he said. "Fine. Let's make some. I propose that we extend the franchise."

No buzz of voices, angry, incredulous or anything. Stone-cold silence.

"I thought you'd take it like that," Basso said pleasantly. "But what the hell. I'm suggesting we give automatic citizenship to all soldiers who've served at least seven years, to all foreigners who've lived here for more than fifteen years--" (it occurred to him: she told me once she was eighteen when she arrived here) "--and all foreigners employed for more than five years in government service. Excluding, of course, criminals and lunatics. Right," he said, and folded his arms. "Please don't all shout at once."

After a very, very long pause, Sentio said: "You're serious."

"Yes."

Sentio stood up. "In that case," he said, "it's been an honour working with you. I'll be going now."

"Shut up and sit down," Basso said, and Sentio, after a moment's hesitation, sat down. "Think about it, for crying out loud. If you paid even slightly more attention than I did to history lectures at school, you'll know that we're not exactly pure-bred stock, not like the Auxentines or the Sclerians. We're bits and pieces from all over, the sweepings of the granary floor, as my grandfather used to say. We need more citizens. We need them to work, to pay taxes, to row galleys in the fleet, to marry and have lots of little Vesani; otherwise, we're going to dwindle away until we're so frail we'll be easy prey for a revolution or a slave revolt." He paused to draw breath, and look at the faces round the table. "Another point you may care to consider," he went on. "If we give the vote to ten thousand or so hitherto excluded and marginalised people, who do you think they're going to vote for? The Optimates?"

A shorter silence. Dorico said, "That's a good point."

"Besides," Basso continued, "there's the balance that Sentio's so keen on. If the Republic's to survive, it's got to keep growing. That means more labour, which means people coming in from outside. Sentio's quite right about the importance of the balance. It's not just a here-and-now problem caused by the plague; it's going to be with us for the foreseeable future, so we'd do well to fix it now. What I'm suggesting is a system for maintaining that balance automatically, so we won't ever have to have a dreary debate like today ever again."

Lanio said: "We should've guessed something like this was coming when he started banging on about wanting to be Basso the Great. And now look." He drew a great sigh, right down to the soles of his feet. "Actually, it makes sense. God only knows how you're planning to get it past the House."

"That's my business," Basso said. "Dorico? What do you reckon?"

"I like the idea of ten thousand guaranteed votes. Where did that ten thousand figure come from, by the way?"

"The top of my head," Basso replied. "But it's probably not far off. Cinio?"

"I think you're out of your mind," Cinio said. "But if that's what you want to do, I'll back you."

"Really?" Basso said. "Why?"

Cinio shrugged. "Because I like being Chancellor," he said. "And if I don't support you, I won't be. Well, is that right?"

"Of course. Sentio? How about it?"

While he was waiting for an answer, he turned his head slightly and looked at the wall. He'd stared at it many times, but for some reason he'd never noticed the portrait of his great-great-grandfather, First Citizen a hundred years earlier. It stood to reason there'd be one, of course; all the First Citizens were there, in gilded ovals, a critical, disapproving audience. Laurentius Severus looks just like me, he thought; same idiot lower lip, same nose, same V-shaped fold above the junction of the eyebrows, permanently frowning, as though everything ever said to him was too ridiculous for words. He'd never seen a portrait of him before, apart from a meaningless silhouette on an old copper liard he'd got in his change.

"All right," Sentio said eventually. "I guess it serves me right for being difficult. And I've been sitting here trying to think of a good argument against it, and for some reason I can't; all I can think of is the sort of stuff you'll get thrown at you in the House, about the integrity of the Republic and betraying the trust of our ancestors." Suddenly he grinned. "Just saying it makes me sound like a bloody Optimate. At least we can enjoy ourselves making them look stupid in the debate."

"What better reason could there possibly be?" Basso said graciously.

"Why?" Antigonus said.

"It's obvious, surely." Basso had picked a rose from the standard outside the back entrance, where there was a small, irrelevant garden. Carefully he lifted the dying flowers from the vase on the windowsill and put his rose in there instead. "If we're going to go ahead with the new shipyard, we'll need a lot of extra workers; skilled men, not just labourers. The obvious place to get them from is Auxentia, but they're not going to uproot themselves and come over here with their families and everything if they reckon they'll be little better than indentured servants. This'll give them the incentive: come over here, stay long enough, and they get the citizenship. Simple as that."