'Oh, come now.' Caecilia's voice became conspiratorial. "You're a handsome enough young boy, as pretty as Valeria any day. And we all know that Sulla casts his net on both sides of the stream.'
'Caecilia!' Cicero's eyes flashed, but he kept his voice steady.
'I'm not suggesting anything improper. Charm, Cicero. A gesture, a look. Rufus needn't actually do anything, of course. "Why, Sulla's old enough to be his grandfather. All the more reason he could condescend to do a small favour for a such a charming boy.'
'Sulla doesn't find me charming’ said Rufus.
'And why not? He married Valeria for her looks, didn't he? And you look enough like her to be her brother.'
There was an odd sputtering noise. It was Tiro, standing behind his master's chair, pressing his lips together to keep from laughing. Cicero covered the noise by loudly clearing his throat.
'If we could go back to something that was mentioned a moment ago,' I said. Three pairs of eyes converged on me. Cicero looked relieved, Tiro attentive, Caecilia confused. Rufus stared at the floor, still blushing.
'You mentioned the penalty for the crime of parricide. I'm not familiar with it. Perhaps you could explain it for my benefit, Cicero.'
The mood was suddenly sombre, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. Caecilia turned aside and hid behind her fan. Rufus exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Tiro.
Cicero filled his cup and took a long draught of water. 'It's not surprising that you shouldn't be familiar with the subject, Gordianus. Parricide is such a rare crime among the Romans. The last conviction, as well as I could ascertain, took place when my grandfather was a young man.
'Traditionally, of course, the penalty of death is carried out by decapitation, or for a slave, crucifixion. In the case of parricide the penalty is very ancient and very severe, laid down long ago by priests, not lawmakers, to express the wrath of father Jupiter against any son who would dare to strike down the carrier of the seed that made him.'
'Please, Cicero.' Caecilia looked over her fan and batted her makeup-laden eyelashes. 'To have heard it once is enough. It gives me nightmares.'
'But Gordianus should know. To know that a man's life is at stake is one thing; to know the way in which he might die is something more. This is what the law decrees: that the condemned parricide, immediately following his conviction, shall be taken outside the city walls to the Field of Mars, close by the Tiber. Horns shall be blown and cymbals sounded, calling the populace to witness.
'When the people are assembled, the parricide shall be stripped naked, as on the day of his birth. Two pedestals, knee-high, shall be placed several feet apart. The parricide shall mount them, one foot on each pedestal, squatting down with his hands chained behind his back. In this fashion, every part of his naked body is made accessible to his tormentors, who are charged by the law to lash him with knotted whips until the blood pours like water from his flesh. If he falls from his perch, he is made to mount it again. The whips are to fall on every part of him, even to the bottoms of his feet and the nether regions between his legs. The blood that drips from his body is the same as the blood that ran through his father's veins and gave him life. Watching it spill from his wounds, he may contemplate the waste.'
Cicero stared vaguely into the distance as he spoke. Caecilia stared at him, her eyes narrow and intense above her fan.
'A sack shall be prepared, large enough to hold a man, made of hides so tightly sewn as to be sealed against water and air. When the whipmasters have completed their work — that is, when every part of the parricide is so covered with blood that one can no longer tell where the blood ends and raw flesh begins — the condemned man shall be made to crawl into the sack. The sack shall be placed some distance from the pedestals, so that the assembled people may watch his progress and be given the opportunity to pelt him with dung and offal and to publicly curse him.
'When he reaches the sack, he shall be induced to crawl inside. If he resists, he shall be dragged back to the pedestals and the punishment begun again.
'Within the sack, the parricide is returned to the womb, unborn, unbirthed. To be born, the philosophers tell us, is an agony. To be unborn is greater agony. Into the sack, crammed against the parricide's torn, bleeding flesh, the tormentors shall push four living animals. First, a dog, the most slavish and contemptuous of beasts, and a rooster, with its beak and claws especially sharpened. These symbols are very ancient: the dog and the cock, the watcher and the waker, guardians of the hearth; having failed to protect father from son, they take their place with the murderer. Along with them goes a snake, the male principle which may kill even as it gives life; and a monkey, the gods' cruellest parody of mankind.'
'Imagine it!' Caecilia gasped behind her fan. 'Imagine the noise!'
'All five shall be sewn up together in the sack and carried to the river's edge. The sack must not be rolled or beaten with sticks — the animals must stay alive within the sack so that they may torment the parricide for as long as possible. While priests pronounce the final curses, the sack shall be thrown into the Tiber. Watchers shall be posted all the way to Ostia; if the sack runs aground it must be pushed back into the stream at once, until it reaches the sea and disappears from sight.
'The parricide destroys the very source of his own life. He ends that life deprived of contact with the very elements which give life to the world — earth, air, water, even sunlight are denied him in the last hours or days of his agony, until at last the sack should rupture at the seams and be devoured by the sea, its spoils passed from Jupiter to Neptune, and thence to Pluto, beyond the caring or the memory or even the disgust of mankind.'
The room was silent. Cicero at last took a long, deep breath. There was a thin smile on his lips, and I thought he looked rather proud of himself, as actors and orators tend to look after a successful recitation.
Caecilia lowered her fan. She was absolutely white beneath her makeup. 'You'll understand now, Gordianus, when you meet him. Poor young Sextus, you'll understand now why he's’ so distraught. Like a rabbit, petrified with terror. Poor boy. They'll do it to him, unless they're stopped. You must help him, young man. You must help Rufus and Cicero stop them.'
'Of course. I'll do whatever I can. If the truth can save Sextus Roscius — I suppose he's here, somewhere in the house?'
'Oh, yes, he isn't allowed to leave; you saw the guards. He would be here with us now, except…'
‘Yes?'
Rufus cleared his throat. 'When you meet him, you'll see.' 'See what?'
'The man is a wreck,' said Cicero. 'Panic-stricken, incoherent, completely distraught. Almost mad with terror.'
'Is he so fearful of being convicted? The case against him must be very strong.'
'Of course he's frightened.' Caecilia batted her fan at a fly perched on her sleeve. 'Who wouldn't be, with such a terror over his head? And just because he's innocent, that hardly means… well, I mean to say, we all know of cases, especially since. .that is, in the last year or so..: to be innocent is hardly to be safe these days.' She darted a quick glance at Rufus, who studiously ignored her.
'The man is afraid of his shadow,' Cicero said. 'Afraid before he came here, but even more afraid now. Afraid of being convicted; afraid of acquittal. He says that whoever killed his father is determined to kill him as well; the trial itself is a plot to dispose of him. If the law fails them, they'll murder him in the streets.'
'He wakes me up in the middle of the night, screaming.' Caecilia swatted at the fly. 'I can hear him all the way from the western wing. Nightmares. I think the monkey is the worst part. Except for the snake…'
Rufus gave a shudder. 'Caecilia says he was actually relieved when they posted the guard outside — as if they were here to protect him, rather than to keep him from escaping. Escape! He won't even leave his rooms.'
'True,' Cicero said. 'Otherwise you would have met him in my study, Gordianus, with no need to come here disturbing our hostess.'
'That would have been a great
loss and entirely to my detriment,' I said, 'never to have been welcomed into the home of Caecilia Metella.'
Caecilia smiled demurely to acknowledge the compliment. In the next instant her eyes darted to the table and her fan descended with a slap. That fly would never bother her again.
'But at any rate, I should have had to meet with her sooner or later in the course of my investigation.'
'But why?' Cicero objected. 'Caecilia knows nothing of the murder. She's only a friend of the family, not a witness.'
'Nevertheless, Caecilia Metella was one of the last to see the elder Roscius alive.'
'Yes, that's true.' She nodded. 'He ate his last meal here in this very room. Oh, how he loved this room. He once told me he had no use for the outdoors at all. Fields and meadows and country life in Ameria bored him without end. "This is all the garden I need," he once told me.' She gestured to the painted walls. 'You see that peacock over there, on the southern wall, with its wings in full array? There, it's lit up at this very moment by the skylight. How he loved that image, all the colours — I remember, he used to call it his Gaius, and wanted me to do the same. Gaius loved this room, too, you know.'
‘Gaius?'
'Yes. His son.'
'I thought the dead man had only one son.' 'Oh, no. Well, yes, only one remaining son, after Gaius died.'
'And when was that?'
'Let me think. Three years ago? Yes, I remember, because it was the very night of Sulla's triumph. There were parties all over the Palatine. People made the rounds from one gathering to another. Everyone feasted — the civil wars were over at last. I hosted a party myself in this room, with the doors to the garden thrown open. Such a warm night — weather exactly like what we're having now. Sulla himself was here for a while. I remember, he made a joke. "Tonight," he said, "everyone who's anyone in Rome is either partying — or packing." Of course, there were some who partied who should have packed. Who could have imagined things would go so far?' She raised her eyebrows and sighed.
'Then it was here that Gaius Roscius died?'
'Oh, no, that's the point. That's why I remember. Gaius and his father should have been here — oh, how that would have excited dear Sextus, to have rubbed elbows with Sulla in this very room, to have had the opportunity to introduce Gaius to him. And knowing the dictator's tastes in that direction' — she narrowed her eyes and looked askance at no one in particular — 'they might have hit it off rather well.'
'Sulla and the boy, you mean?'
'Of course.'
"Then Gaius was a comely youth?'
'Oh, yes. Fair-haired and handsome, intelligent, well-mannered. Everything dear Sextus wanted in a son.' 'How old was Gaius?'
'Let me think, he had taken his manly toga some time before. Nineteen, I imagine, perhaps twenty.'
'Considerably younger than his brother?'
'Oh, yes, I imagined poor young Sextus is — what, forty at the least? He has two daughters, you know. The elder is almost sixteen.'
'Were they close, the two brothers?'
'Gaius and young Sextus? I don't think so. I don't see how they could have been — they almost never saw each other. Gaius spent all his time with his rather in the city, while Sextus ran the farms in Ameria.'
'I see. You were going to tell me how Gaius died.'
'Really, I don't see how any of this pertains to the case at hand.' Cicero shifted uncomfortably in his chair. 'It's nothing more than gossip.'
I glanced at him, not without sympathy. Thus far Cicero had treated me with uncommon courtesy, partly because he was naive, partly because of his nature. But my talking so freely with a woman so far above me (a Metella!) irked even his liberal sensibility. He saw the dialogue for what it was, an interrogation, and he took offence.
'No, no, Cicero, let him ask.' Caecilia reproached him with her fan and indulged me with a smile. She was happy, even eager, to talk about her late friend. I had to wonder exactly what her own relationship had been once upon a time with party-going, fun-loving old Sextus Roscius.
'No, Gaius Roscius did not die in Rome.' Caecilia sighed. 'They were to have come here that night, to pass the early evening at my party; then we would all walk to sands were invited. Sulla's largesse was boundless. Sextus Roscius was quite anxious to make a good appearance; only a few days before, he had come by with young Gaius to ask my advice on his apparel. If things had gone as they should have, Gaius would never have died….' Her voice died away. She raised her eyes to the sunlit peacock.
'The Fates intervened,' I prompted.
'As they have a nasty habit of doing. Two days before the triumph Sextus pater received a message from Sextus filius in Ameria, urging him to come home. Some emergency — a fire, a flood, I'm not sure. So urgent that Sextus rushed home to the family estate and took Gaius with him. He hoped to be back in time for the festivities. Instead he stayed in Ameria for the funeral.'
'How did it happen?'
'Food poisoning. A bad jar of pickled mushrooms — one of Gaius's favourite delicacies. Sextus described the incident to me later in great detail, how his son collapsed on the floor and began vomiting clear bile. Sextus reached into his throat, thinking his son was choking. The boy's throat was burning hot. When he pulled out his fingers they were covered with blood. Gaius coughed up more bile, this time thick and black. He was dead within minutes. Senseless, tragic. Dear Sextus was never the same afterwards.'
‘You say that Gaius was nineteen or twenty, yet I thought his father was a widower. When did the boy's mother die?'
'Oh — but of course, you wouldn't know. She died giving birth to Gaius. I think that was one of the reasons Sextus loved the boy so much. He resembled his mother a great deal. Sextus thought of Gaius as her final gift to him.'
'And the two sons— they must have been born almost twenty years apart. To the same mother?'
'No. Didn't I explain? Gaius and young Sextus were half brothers. The first wife died of some illness years ago.' Caecilia shrugged. 'Perhaps another reason the boys were never close.'
'I see. And when Gaius died, did that bring Sextus Roscius and his elder son closer together?'
Caecilia glanced away sadly. 'No. It was quite the opposite, I'm afraid. Sometimes tragedy has that effect on a family, to deepen old wounds. Sometimes a father loves one son more than the other — who can change such a fact? When Gaius died, Sextus blamed the boy's brother. It was an accident, of course, but an old man in the throes of grief isn't always strong enough to blame the gods. He came back to Rome and frittered away his time — and his fortune. He once told me, now that Gaius was dead, he had no one to whom he cared to leave a legacy, so he was determined to spend it all before, he died. Cruel words, I know. While Sextus filius ran the estates, Sextus pater blindly spend everything he could. You can imagine the bitterness on both sides.'
'Enough bitterness to lead to murder?'
Caecilia gave a weary shrug. Her vivaciousness had deserted her. The disguise of hernia and makeup abruptly faded, revealing the wrinkled woman beneath. 'I don't know. It would be almost unbearable to think that Sextus Roscius was killed by his own son.'
'That night last September — on the Ides, wasn't it? — Sextus Roscius dined here. . before his death?' 'Yes.'
'When did he leave your house?'
'He left early, I remember. It was his habit to stay on until well into the night, but that evening he left before me final course. It was the first hour after nightfall.'
'And do you know where he was headed?'
'Home, I suppose..' Her voice trailed off in an unnatural way. Caecilia Metella, having lived so many years alone, lacked at least one skill that all Roman wives possess. Caecilia Metella had no ability to lie.
I cleared my throat. 'Perhaps Sextus Roscius wasn't on his way home when he left you that night. Perhaps there was a reason he left eariy. An appointment? A message?'
‘Well, yes, actually.' Caecilia furrowed her brow. 'It seems to me there was a messenger who came. Yes, a very common sort o
f messenger, the kind that anyone might hire off the street. He came to the servants' door. Ahausarus came looking for me, explaining there was a man outside the kitchens with a message for Sextus Roscius. I was hosting a small party that night; there were only six or eight of us in the room, not yet done with dinner. Sextus was relaxing, almost dozing. Ahausarus whispered in his ear. Sextus looked a bit startled, but he rose at once and left the room without even asking my leave.'
'I don't suppose, in some way or other, you happened to know what that message was?'
Cicero groaned, very faindy. Caecilia stiffened, and the natural colour rose in her cheeks. 'Young man, Sextus Roscius and I were very old, very dear friends.'
'I understand, Caecilia Metella.'
'Do you? An old man needs someone to look after his interests, and to show some curiosity when strange messengers arrive to disturb him in the night. Of course, I followed. And I listened.'
'Ah. Then could you tell me from whom this messenger came?'
"These were his exact words: "Elena asks that you come to the House of Swans at once. It's very important." And then he showed Sextus a token.'
"What sort of token?'
'A ring.’
'A ring?’
'A woman's ring — small, silver, very plain. The sort of ring a poor man might give to his lover, or the sort of petty token that a rich man might give to a..'
‘I see.'
'Do you? After Gaius died, Sextus began spending a great deal of time and money in those sorts of places.. I'm talking about brothels, of course. Do you think it pathetic, a man of his age? But don't you see, it was because of Gaius. As if there were a sudden, overwhelming desire in him to create another son.. Absurd, of course, but sometimes a man must bow to nature. Healing takes place in mysterious ways.'
We sat in silence for a moment. 'I think you are a wise woman, Caecilia Metella. Do you know anything else about this Elena?'
'No.'
'Or the House of Swans?'
'Nothing, except that it's somewhere in the vicinity of the Baths of Pallacina, not very far from Sextus's house by the Circus Flaminius. Well, you don't think he would have patronized some tawdry establishment in the Subura, do you?'
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