Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  '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 m
ust.'

  '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?'