"Roman blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Saylor Steven)

3

As Tiro had said, Cicero's house was considerably smaller than my own. Its exterior was almost self-consciously modest and sedate, a single-storey structure without a single ornament. The face it presented to the street was utterly blank, nothing more than a wall of saffron stucco pierced by a narrow wooden door.

The apparent modesty of Cicero's home signified little. We were, of course, in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Rome, where size gives little indication of wealth. Even the smallest house here might be worth the price of a block of villas in the Subura. Besides that, the wealthier classes of Rome have traditionally shunned any display of ostentation in their homes, at least as regards the exterior. They claim this is a matter of good taste. I suspect it has more to do with their fear that a vulgar show of wealth might kindle jealousy among the mob. Consider also that a costly decoration on the outside of a house is far easier to carry off than the same decoration safely displayed somewhere inside.

Such austerity and restraint have never ceased to be regarded as ideal. Even so, in my own lifetime I have seen a definite veering towards public opulence. This is notably true among the young and ambitious, especially those whose fortunes flowered in the wake of the civil war and Sulla's triumph. They add a second storey; they build porticoes upon their roofs. They install statuary imported from Greece.

Nothing of the sort appeared on the street where Cicero lived. Decorum reigned. The houses turned their backs upon the street, facing inward, having nothing to say to any stranger who might wander by, reserving their secret life for those privileged to enter within.

The street was short and quiet. There were no markets at either end, and wandering vendors apparently knew better than to disturb the silence. Grey paving stones underfoot, pale blue sky above, faded stucco stained by rain and cracked by heat on either side; no other colours were allowed, least of all green — not a single unruly weed could be seen sprouting through the cobbles or springing up beside a wall, much less a flower or a tree. The very air, rising odourless and hot from the paving stones, breathed the sterile purity of Roman virtue.

Even in the midst of such restraint, the house of Cicero was particularly austere. In an ironic way it was so unassuming that it actually drew attention to itself — there, one might say, there is the ideal dwelling for a wealthy Roman of the most rarefied Roman virtue. The little house looked so modest and so narrow that one might have assumed it to be the home of a once-wealthy Roman matron, now widowed and in reduced circumstances; or perhaps the town house of a rich country farmer who came to the city only for occasional business, never to entertain or enjoy a holiday; or perhaps (and so it was, in fact) such an austere house on such an unassuming street might belong to a young bachelor of substantial means and old-fashioned values, a citified son of country parents poised to seek his fortune among Rome's higher circles, a young man of stern Roman virtue so sure of himself that even youth and ambition could not lure him into the vulgar missteps of fashion.

Tiro rapped upon the door.

A few moments later a grey-bearded slave opened it. Afflicted by some palsy, the old man's head was in constant motion, nodding up and down and tilting from side to side. He took his time in recognizing Tiro, peering and squinting and extending his head on its slender neck in turtle fashion. The nodding never ceased. Finally he smiled a toothless smile and stepped aside, pulling the door wide open.

The foyer was in the shape of a semicircle with its straight wall to our backs. The curving wall before us was pierced by three doorways, each flanked by slender columns and capped with a pediment. The corridors beyond were concealed by curtains of rich red fabric, embroidered along the bottom with an acanthus motif in yellow. Standing Grecian lamps at either corner and a floor mosaic of no great distinction (Diana in pursuit of a boar) completed the decoration. It was as I had expected. The vestibule was adequately restrained and tasteful so as not to contradict the sternness of the stucco facade, yet so expensively appointed as to belie any impression of poverty.

The old doorkeeper indicated with a gesture that we should wait. Silent and smiling, he withdrew through the curtained doorway to our left, his wizened head bobbing above his narrow shoulders like a cork on gentle waves.

'An old family retainer?' I asked. I waited until he had passed from sight, and kept my voice low. Obviously the old man's ears were sharper than his eyes, for he had heard well enough to answer the door; and it would have been rude to talk about him in his presence, as if he were a slave, for he was not. I had noticed the ring of manumission upon his finger, marking him a freedman and citizen.

'My grandfather,' Tiro answered, with more than a little pride in his voice, 'Marcus Tullius Tiro.' He craned his neck and looked towards the doorway, as if he could see through the red curtain to watch the old man's shuffling progress down the corridor. The embroidered bottom edge of the curtain wavered slightly, lifted by a breeze. Thus I deduced that the hallway to the left led somehow to fresh air and sky, probably to the atrium at the heart of the house, where presumably Master Cicero was taking comfort in the heat of the morning.

'Then your line has been serving the family for at least three generations?' I said.

'Yes, though my father died when I was very small, before I had the chance to know him. As did my mother. Old Tiro is the only family I have.'

'And how long ago did your master free him?' I asked, for it was Cicero's first and family names that the old man now bore in addition to his old slave name: Marcus Tullius Tiro, freed by Marcus Tullius Cicero. Such is the tradition, that an emancipated slave will take the first two names of the man who frees him, giving them precedence to his own.

'Going on five years now. Cicero's grandfather back in Arpinum owned him until that time. Owned me as well, though I've always been with Cicero, since we both were boys. The old master transferred ownership as a gift when Cicero completed his studies and set up his own household here in Rome. That was when Cicero freed him. Cicero's grandfather would never have bothered. He doesn't believe in manumission, no matter how old a slave becomes, no matter how long or how well he serves a master. The Tullius family may have come from Arpinum, but they're Roman to the core. They're a very stern and old-fashioned family.'

'And you?'

'Me?'

'Do you suppose Cicero will one day free you as well?'

Tiro coloured. 'You ask the strangest questions, sir.'

'Only because it's my nature. My profession, as well. You must have asked yourself the same question already, more than once.'

'Doesn't every slave?' There was no bitterness in Tiro's voice, only a pale and unassuming note of sadness, a particular melancholy I had met before. I knew then, in that instant, that young Tiro was one of those slaves, naturally intelligent and brought up amid wealth, who bears the curse of realizing how arbitrary and capricious are the whims of Fortune, which make one man a slave all his life and another a king, when at root there is no discernible difference between them. 'One of these days,' he said quietly, 'when my master is established, when I'm older. Anyway, what's the use of being free unless you want to start a family? It's the only advantage I can see. And that's something I don't think about. Not often, anyway.'

Tiro turned his face away, looking towards the doorway, staring at the spot where his grandfather had stepped through the curtain. He looked back at me and his face rearranged itself. It took me a moment to realize that he was smiling. 'Besides,' he said, 'better to wait until my grandfather dies. Otherwise there'll be two freedmen named Marcus Tullius Tiro, and how would men tell us apart?'

'How do they tell you apart now?'

'Tiro and Old Tiro, naturally.' He smiled a more genuine smile. 'Grandfather won't answer to the name Marcus. He thinks it's bad luck somehow if you call him that. Tempting the gods. Besides, he's too old to get used to a new name, even if he is proud of it.

And it's no use calling him, anyway. These days he'll answer the door and that's about it. He can take a very long time. I think my master likes it that way. Cicero thinks it's good manners to keep guests waiting at the door, and even better manners to keep them pacing here in the anteroom, at least on a first visit, while Old Tiro announces them.'

'Is that what we're doing now? Waiting to be announced?'

Tiro crossed his arms and nodded. I looked around the room. There was not even a bench to sit upon. Very Roman, I thought.

At length Old Tiro returned, lifting the curtain for his master. How shall I describe Marcus Tullius Cicero? The beautiful all look alike, but a plain man is plain according to his own peculiarity. Cicero had a large forehead, a fleshy nose, and thinning hair. He was of medium height, with a thin chest, narrow shoulders, and a long neck with a prominent knob protruding from the gullet. He looked considerably older than his twenty-six years.

'Gordianus,' Tiro said, introducing me. "The one they call the Finder.'

I nodded. Cicero smiled warmly. There was a restless, inquisitive sparkle in his eyes. I was immediately impressed, without quite knowing why.

And in the next instant dismayed when Cicero opened his mouth to speak. He said only two words, but that was enough. The voice that came from his throat was high and grating. Tiro, with his sweet modulations, should have been the orator. Cicero had a voice fit for an auctioneer or a comic actor, a voice as peculiar as his name. "This way,' he said, indicating that we should follow him through the red curtain.

The hallway was quite short, hardly a hallway at all. We walked between unadorned walls for only a few paces, and then both walls ended. To the right was a broad curtain of pale yellow gauze, so fine I could see straight through it into the small but immaculately kept atrium beyond. Open to the sun and sky, the atrium was like a well carved out of the house, a reservoir spilling over with heat and light. At its centre a tiny fountain splashed. The gauzy curtain rippled and billowed gently, like a mist disturbed by a puff of air, like a living membrane signing at the slightest breeze.

Facing the atrium was a large, airy room lit by narrow windows set high in the ceiling. The walls were of white plaster. The furniture was all of dark polished wood in rustic designs, embellished by subtle flourishes of woodwork, silver clasps, and inlays of mother-of-pearl, carnelian, and lapis.

The room was filled with an astonishing number of scrolls. This was Cicero's library and his study. Such rooms are often the most intimate in the homes of wealthy men, revealing more about their owners than do bedchambers or dining rooms, which are the domain of women and slaves. It was a private room, indelibly marked by its owner, but a public room as well — testifying to this were the number of chairs scattered about, some of.them pulled close together, as if they had just been vacated by a huddled group of visitors. Cicero gestured to a group of three chairs, seated himself, and indicated that we should do likewise. What kind of man greets guests in his library rather than in his dining room or veranda? A man with Greek pretensions, I thought. A scholar. A lover of knowledge and wisdom. A man who would open a conversation with a total stranger with a gambit such as this:

'Tell me something, Gordianus the Finder — have you ever considered murdering your father?'

What must my face have looked like? I suppose I gave a start, winced, looked askance. Cicero saw all and smiled in that demure way that orators smile whenever they successfully manipulate an audience. Actors (I have known more than a few) feel much the same sort of satisfaction, the same thrill of power. The herdsman reveals the truth to Oedipus, and with a single word elicits gasps of shock and dismay from a thousand throats, all responding on cue. Behind his mask the herdsman smiles and makes his exit.

I pretended to gaze with an abstracted air at some nearby scrolls; I could see from the corner of my eye that Cicero still watched me, intent on gauging my every reaction. Orators think they can control everyone and everything with their words. I strained to' bleed every hint of expression from my face.

'My father,' I began, and then had to pause to clear my throat, hating the interruption, for it seemed a sign of weakness. 'My father is already dead, esteemed Cicero. He died many years ago.' The mischief in his eyes receded. He frowned.

'My apologies,' he said quietly, with a slight bow of his head. 'I meant no offence.'

'None was taken.'

'Good.' After a suitable interval the frown vanished. The look of mischief returned. 'Then you won't mind if I pose the same question again — purely as a hypothetical matter, of course. Suppose then, only suppose, that you had a father you wished to be rid of How would you go about it?'

I shrugged. 'How old is the old man?'

'Sixty, perhaps sixty-five.'

'And how old am I — hypothetically speaking?'

'Perhaps forty.'

'Time,' I said. 'Whatever the complaint, time will take care of it, as surely as any other remedy.'

Cicero nodded. 'Simply wait, you mean. Sit back. Relax. Allow nature to take its course. Yes, that would be the easiest way. And perhaps, though not necessarily, the safest. Certainly, it's what most people would do, confronted with another person whose existence they can hardly bear — especially if that person is older or weaker, especially if he happens to be a member of the family. Most especially if he happens to be one's father. Bear the discomfort and be patient. Let it be resolved by time. After all, no one lives forever, and the young usually outlive their elders.'

Cicero paused. The yellow gauze gently rose and fell as if the whole house exhaled. The room was flooded with heat. 'But time can be something of a luxury. Certainly, if one waits long enough, an old man of sixty-five will eventually expire on his own — though he may be an old man of eighty-five before that happens.'

He rose from his chair and began to pace. Cicero was not a man to orate while sitting still. I would later come to see his whole body as a sort of engine — the legs deliberately pacing, the arms in motion, the hands shaping ponderous gestures, the head tilting, the eyebrows oscillating up and down. None of these movements was an end in itself. Instead they were all connected together somehow, and all subservient to his voice, that strange, irritating, completely fascinating voice — as if his voice were an instrument and his body the machine that produced it; as if his limbs and digits were the gears and levers necessary to manufacture the voice that issued from his mouth. The body moved. The voice emerged.

'Consider,' he said — a tilt of the head, a subtle flourish of the hand — 'an old man of sixty-five, a widower living alone in Rome. Not at all the reclusive type. He's quite fond of going to dinners and parties. He loves the arena and the theatre. He frequents the baths. He even patronizes -1 swear it, at sixty-five! — the neighbourhood brothel. Pleasure is his life. As for work, he's retired. Oh, there's money to spare. Valuable estates in the countryside, vineyards and farms — but he doesn't bother with that any more. He's long left the work of running things to someone younger.'

'To me,' I said.

Cicero smiled slightly. Like all orators; he hated any interruption, but the question proved that I was at least listening. 'Yes,' he said, 'hypothetically speaking. To you. To his hypothetical son. As for the old man, his own life is now devoted solely to pleasure. In its pursuit he walks the streets of the city at all hours of the day and night, attended only by his slaves.'

'He has no bodyguard?' I said.

'None to speak of. Two slaves accompany him. More for convenience than protection.' 'Armed?' 'Probably not.'

'My hypothetical father is asking for trouble.'

Cicero nodded. 'Indeed. The streets of Rome are hardly the place for any decent citizen to go gadding about in the middle of the night. Especially an older man. Especially if he has the look of money about him, and no armed guard. Foolhardy! Taking his life into his hands, day by day — such an old fool. Sooner or later he'll come to no good end, or so you think. And yet, year after year he keeps up this outrageous behaviour, and it comes to nothing. You begin to think that some invisible demon or spirit must be looking after him, for he never comes to harm. Never once is he robbed. Not once is he even threatened. The worst that occurs is that he may be accosted by a beggar or a drunkard or some vagrant whore late at night, and these he can easily handle with a coin or a word to his slaves. No, time seems not to be cooperating. Left to his own devices, the old man may very well live forever.'

'And would that be so bad? I think I'm beginning to like him.'

Cicero raised an eyebrow. 'On the contrary, you hate him. Never mind why. Simply assume for the moment that, for whatever reason, you want him dead. Desperately.'

'Time would still be easiest. Sixty-five, you said — how is his health?’

'Excellent. Probably better than yours. And why not? Everyone is always saying how overworked you are, running the estates, raising your family, working yourself into an early grave — while the old man hasn't a care in the world. All he does is enjoy himself. In the morning he rests. In the afternoon he plans his evening. In the evening he stuffs himself with expensive food, drinks to excess, carouses with men half his age. The next morning he recovers at the baths and begins all over again. How is his health? I told you, he still patronizes the local whorehouse.'

'Food and drink have been known to kill, a man,' I ventured. 'And they say that many a whore has stopped an old man's heart.'

Cicero shook his head. 'Not good enough, too unreliable. You hate him, don't you understand? Perhaps you fear him. You grow impatient for his death.'

'Politics?' I offered.

Cicero ceased his pacing for a moment, smiled, and then resumed. 'Politics,' he said. 'Yes, in these days, in Rome — politics could certainly kill a man more quickly and surely than high living or a whore's embrace or even a midnight stroll through the Subura.' He spread his hands wide open in an orator’s despair. 'Unfortunately, the old man is one of those remarkable creatures who manages to go through life without ever having any politics at all.'

'In Rome?' I said. 'A citizen and a landowner? Impossible.'

'Then say that he's one of those men like a rabbit — charming, vacuous, harmless. Never attracting attention to himself, never giving offence. Not worth the bother of hunting, so long as there's larger game afoot. Surrounded on every side by politics, like a thicket of nettles, yet able to slip through the maze without a scratch.'

'He sounds clever. I like this old man more and more.'

Cicero frowned. 'Cleverness has nothing to do with it. The old man has no strategy except to slip through life with the least possible inconvenience. He's lucky, that's all. Nothing reaches him. The Italian allies rise in revolt against Rome? He comes from Ameria, a village that waits until the last moment to join the revolt, then reaps the first fruits of the reconciliation; that's how he became a citizen. Civil war between Marius and Sulla, then between Sulla and Cinna? The old man wavers in his loyalty — a realist and an opportunist like most Romans these days — and emerges like the delicate maiden who traverses a raging stream by hopping from stone to stone without even getting her sandals wet. Those who have no opinions are the only people safe today. A rabbit, I tell you. If you leave it to politics to put him in danger, he'll live to be a hundred.'

'Surely he can't be as vapid as you describe. Every man takes risks these days just by being alive. You say he's a landowner, with interests in Rome. He must be a client to some influential family. Who are his patrons?'

Cicero laughed. 'Even there he chooses the blandest, safest possible family to ally himself with — the Metelli. Sulla's in-laws — or at least they were until Sulla divorced his fourth wife. And not just any of the Metelli, but the oldest, the most inert, and endlessly respectable of its many branches. Somehow or other he ingratiated himself to Caecilia Metella. Have you ever met her?'

I shook my head.

'You will,' he said mysteriously. 'No, politics will never kill this old man for you. Sulla may fill up the Forum with heads on sticks, the Field of Mars may become a bowl of blood tipping into the Tiber — you'll still find the old man traipsing about after dark in the worst parts of town, stuffed from a dinner party at Caecilia's, blithely on his way to the neighbourhood whorehouse.'

Cicero abruptly sat down. The machine, it seemed, needed an occasional rest, but the cracked instrument continued to play. 'So you see that fate will not cooperate in taking the odious old man off your hands. Besides, it may be that there's some urgent reason that you want him dead — not just hatred or a grudge, but some crisis immediately at hand. You have to take action yourself.'

'You suggest that I murder my own father?'

'Exactly.'

'Impossible.'

'You must.'

'Un-Roman!'

'Fate compels you.'

"Then — poison?'

He shrugged. 'Possibly, if you had the proper access. But you're not an ordinary father and son, coming and going in each other's household. There's been some bitterness between you. Consider the old man has his own town house here in Rome, and seldom sleeps anywhere else. You live at the old family home in Ameria, and on the rare occasions when business brings you into the city, you never sleep in your father's house.

You stay with a friend instead, or even at an inn — the quarrel between you runs that deep. So you don't have easy access to the old man's dinner before he eats it. Bribe one of his servants? Unlikely and highly uncertain — in a family divided, the slaves always choose sides. They'll be far more loyal to him than to you. Poison is an unworkable solution.'

The yellow curtain rippled. A gust of warm air slipped beneath its hem and entered the room like a mist clinging low to the ground. I felt it pool and eddy about my feet, heavy with the scent of jasmine. The morning was almost over. The true heat of the day was about to begin. I suddenly felt sleepy. So did Tiro; I saw him stifle a yawn. Perhaps he was simply bored. This was probably not the first time that he had heard his master run through the same string of arguments, refining his logic, worrying over the particular polish and gloss of each phrase.

I cleared my throat. 'Then the solution seems obvious, esteemed Cicero. If the father must be murdered — at the instigation of his own son, a crime almost too hideous to contemplate — then it should be done when the old man is most vulnerable and most accessible. Some moonless night, on his way home from a party, or on his way to a brothel. No witnesses at that hour, at least none who'd be eager to testify. Gangs roaming the streets. There would be nothing suspicious about such a death. It would be easy to blame it on some passing group of anonymous thugs.'

Cicero leaned forwards in his chair. The machine was reviving. 'So you wouldn't commit the act yourself, by your own hand?'

'Certainly not! I wouldn't even be in Rome. I'd be far to the north in my house in Ameria — having nightmares, probably.'

'You'd hire some assassins to do it for you?'

'Of course.'

'People you knew and trusted?'

'Would I be likely to know such people personally? A hardworking Amerian farmer?' I shrugged. 'More likely I'd be relying on strangers. A gang leader met in a tavern in the Subura. A nameless acquaintance recommended by another acquaintance known to a casual friend…'

'Is that how it's done?' Cicero was genuinely curious. He spoke no longer to the hypothetical parricide, but to Gordianus the Finder. 'They told me that you would actually know a thing or two about this sort of business. They said: "Yes, if you want to get in touch with the kind of men who don't mind getting blood on their hands, Gordianus is one place to start.'"

'They! Whom do you mean, Cicero? Who says that I drink from the same cup with killers?'

He bit his lip, not quite certain how much he wanted to tell me yet. I answered for him. 'I think you mean Hortensius, don't you? Since it was Hortensius who recommended me to you?'

Cicero shot a sharp glance at Tiro, who was suddenly quite awake.

'No, Master, I told him nothing. He guessed it — ' For the first time that day, Tiro sounded to me like a slave. 'Guessed? What do you mean?'

'Deduced would be a better word. Tiro is telling the truth. I know, more or less anyway, what you've called me for. A murder case involving a father and son, both called Sextus Roscius.'

'You guessed that this was my reason for calling on you? But how? I only decided yesterday to take on Roscius as a client.'

I sighed. The curtain sighed. The heat crept up my feet and legs, like water slowly rising in a well. 'Perhaps you should have Tiro explain it to you later. I think it's too hot for me to go through it all again step by step. But I know that Hortensius had the case to begin with, and that you have it now. And I presume that all this talk about hypothetical conspiracies has something to do with the actual murder?'

Cicero looked glum. I think he felt foolish at finding that I had known the true circumstances all along. 'Yes,' he said, 'It's hot. Tiro, you'll bring some refreshment. Some wine, mixed with cool water. Perhaps some fruit. Do you like dried apples, Gordianus?'

Tiro rose from his chair. 'I'll tell Athalena.'

'No, Tiro, fetch it yourself. Take your time.' The order was demeaning, and intentionally so; I could tell by the look of hurt in Tiro's eyes, and by the look in Cicero's as well, heavy-lidded and drooping from something other than the heat. Tiro was unused to being given such menial tasks. And Cicero? One sees it all the time, a master taking out petty frustrations on the slaves around him. The habit becomes so commonplace that they do it without thinking; slaves come to accept it without humiliation or repining, as if it were a god-sent inconvenience, like rainfall on a market day.

Cicero and Tiro were not nearly so advanced along that path. Before Tiro had disappeared pouting from the room, Cicero relented, as much as he could without losing face. 'Tiro!' he called. He waited for the slave to turn. He looked him in the eye. 'Be sure to bring a portion for yourself as well.'

A crueller man would have smiled as he spoke. A lesser man would have cast his eyes to the floor. Cicero did neither, and in that moment I discovered my first glimmering of respect for him.

Tiro departed. For a moment Cicero toyed with a ring on his finger, then turned his attention back to me.

'You were about to tell me something of how one goes about arranging a murder in the streets of Rome. Forgive me if the question is presumptuous. I don't mean to imply that you yourself have ever offended the gods by taking part in such crimes. But they say — Hortensius says — that you happen to know more than a little about these matters. Who, how, and how much…'

I shrugged. 'If a man wants another man murdered, there's nothing so difficult about that. As I said, a word to the right man, a bit of gold passed from hand to hand, and the job is done.'

'But where does one find the right man?'

I had been forgetting how young and inexperienced he was, despite his education and wit. 'It's easier than you might think. For years the gangs have been controlling the streets of Rome after dark, and sometimes even in broad daylight.'

'But the gangs fight each other.'

"The gangs fight anyone who gets in their way.'

'Their crimes are political. They ally themselves with a particular party—'

'They have no politics, except the politics of whatever man hires them. And no loyalty, except the loyalty that money buys. Think, Cicero. Where do the gangs come from? Some of them are spawned right here in Rome, like maggots under a rock — the poor, the children of the poor, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Whole dynasties of crime, generations of villains breeding pedigrees of vice. They negotiate with one another like little nations. They intermarry like noble families. And they hire themselves out like mercenaries to whatever politician or general offers the grandest promises.'

Cicero glanced away, peering into the translucent folds of the yellow curtain, as if he could see beyond it all the human refuse of Rome. 'Where do they all come from?' he muttered.

'They grow up through the pavement,' I said, 'like weeds. Or they drift in from the countryside, refugees from war after war. Think about it: Sulla wins his war against the rebellious Italian allies and pays his soldiers in land. But to acquire that land, the defeated allies must first be uprooted. Where do they end up, except as beggars and slaves in Rome? And all for what? The countryside is devastated by war. The soldiers know nothing of farming; in a month or a year they sell their holdings to the highest bidder and head back to the city. The countryside falls into the grip of vast landholders. Small farmers struggle to compete, are defeated and dispossessed — they find their way to Rome. More and more I've seen it in my own lifetime, the gulf between the rich and poor, the smallness of the one, the vastness of the other. Rome is like a woman of fabulous wealth and beauty, draped in gold and festooned with jewels, her belly big with a foetus named Empire — and infested from head to foot by a million scampering lice.'

Cicero frowned. 'Hortensius warned me that you would talk politics.'

'Only because politics is the air we breathe — I inhale a breath, and what else could come out? It may be otherwise in other cities, but not in the Republic, and not in our lifetimes. Call it politics, call it reality. The gangs exist for a reason. No one can get rid of them. Everyone fears them. A man bent on murder would find a way to use them. He'd only be following the example of a successful politician.'

'You mean—'

'I don't mean any particular politician. They all use the gangs, or try to.'

'But you mean Sulla.'

Cicero spoke the name first. I was surprised. I was impressed. At some point the conversation had slipped out of control. It was quickly turning seditious.

'Yes,' I said 'If you insist: Sulla.' I looked away. My eyes fell on the yellow curtain. I found myself gazing at it and into it, as if in the vagueness of the shapes beyond I could make out the images of an old nightmare. 'Were you in Rome when the proscriptions began?'

Cicero nodded.

'So was I. Then you know what it was like. Each day the new list of the proscribed would be posted in the Forum. And who were always first in line to read the names? No, not anyone who might have been on the list, because they were all cowering at home, or wisely barricaded in the countryside. First in line were the gangs and their leaders — because Sulla didn't care who destroyed his enemies, or his imagined enemies, so long as they were destroyed. Show up with the head of a proscribed man slung over your shoulder, sign a receipt, and receive a bag of silver in exchange. To acquire that head, stop at nothing. Break down the doors of a citizen's house. Beat his children, rape his wife — but leave his valuables in place, for once head and body are parted, the property of a proscribed Roman becomes the property of Sulla.'

'Not exactly…'

'I misspoke, of course. I meant to say that when an enemy of the state is beheaded, his estate is confiscated and becomes property of the state — meaning that it will be auctioned at the earliest convenient date at insanely low prices to Sulla's friends.'

Even Cicero blanched at this. He concealed his agitation well, but I noticed his eyes shift for the briefest instant from side to side, as if he were wary of spies concealed among the scrolls. ‘You're a man of strong opinions, Gordianus. The heat loosens your tongue. But what has any of this to do with the subject at hand?'

I had to laugh. 'And what is the subject? I think I've forgotten.'

'Arranging a murder,' Cicero snapped, sounding for all the world like a teacher of oratory attempting to steer an unruly pupil back to the prescribed topic. 'A murder of purely personal motive.'

‘Well, then, I'm only trying to point out how easy it is these days to find a willing assassin. And not only in the Subura. Look on any street corner — yes, even this one. I'd gladly wager that I could leave your door, walk around the block exactly once, and return with a newfound friend more than willing to murder my pleasure-loving, whoremongering, hypothetical father.'

'You go too far, Gordianus. Had you been trained in rhetoric, you'd know the limits of hyperbole.'

'I don't exaggerate. The gangs have grown that bold. It's Sulla's fault and no one else's. He made them his personal bounty hunters.

He unleashed them to run wild across Rome, like packs of wolves. Until the proscriptions officially ended last year, the gangs had almost unlimited power to hunt and kill. So they bring in the head of an innocent man, a man who's hot oh the list — so what? Accidents happen. Add his name to the list of the proscribed. The dead man becomes a retroactive enemy of the state. What matter if that means his family will be disinherited, his children ruined and reduced to paupers, fresh fodder for the gangs? It also means that some friend of Sulla's will acquire a new house in the city.'

Cicero looked as if a bad tooth were worrying him. He raised his hand to silence me. I raised my own hand to stave him off.

'I'm only now reaching my point. You see, it wasn't only the rich and powerful who suffered during the proscriptions, and still suffer. Once Pandora's box is opened, no one can close it. Crime becomes habit. The unthinkable becomes commonplace. You don't see it from here, where you live. This street is too narrow, too quiet. No weeds grow through the paving stones that run by your door. Oh, no doubt, in the worst of it, you had a few neighbours dragged from their homes in the middle of the night. Perhaps you have a view of the Forum from the roof and on a clear day you might have counted the new heads added to the pikes.

'But I see a different Rome, Cicero, that other Rome that Sulla has left to posterity. They say he plans to retire soon, leaving behind him a new constitution to strengthen the upper classes and put the people in their place. And what is that place, but the crime-ridden Rome that Sulla bequeaths to us? My Rome, Cicero. A Rome that breeds in shadow, that moves at night, that breathes the very air of vice without the disguises of politics or wealth. After all, that's why you've called me here, isn't it? To take you into that world, or to enter it myself and bring back to you whatever it is you're seeking. That's what I can offer you, if you're seeking the truth.'

At that moment Tiro returned, bearing a silver tray set with three cups, a round loaf of bread, dried apples, and white cheese. His presence instantly sobered me. We were no longer two men alone in a room discussing politics, but two citizens and a slave, or two men and a boy, considering Tiro's innocence. I would never have spoken so recklessly had he never left the room. I feared I had said too much already.