Roman blood rsr-1

by Steven Saylor

  'A reasonable point of honour,' I agreed, trying to keep my voice steady. 'What do you want?'

  'To kill you.'

  I sucked in a sharp breath, full of the smell of stale urine. 'Now? Still?'

  'That's right.' He stopped scraping and touched the point of the blade to his fingertip. A bead of blood welled up from the flesh. Glaucia sucked it clean.

  Judges, it behooves wise men, furnished with the authority you possess, to apply the surest remedies to the lingering ills of this republic… '

  'But why? The trial is almost over.'

  Instead of answering he continued to suck his thumb and recommenced scraping the blade against the wall. He stared at me like a demented child, monstrously overgrown. The knife in my tunic was a good match for his, but I judged his arm to be two hands longer. The odds were not good.

  'Why kill me? No matter what happens now, nothing you do to me can change matters. My part in this affair was over days ago. It was the slave who struck your head the other night, if that's what you're angry about. You have no grudge against me, Mallius Glaucia. You have no reason to kill me. No reason at all.'

  He quit scraping the blade. He stopped sucking his thumb. He looked at me very earnestly. 'But I've already told you: I want to kill you. Are you going to finish pissing or not?'

  'There is not a man among you who does not know the reputation of the Roman people as merciful conquerors, lenient towards their foreign enemies; yet today Romans continue to turn on one another with shocking cruelty.'

  Glaucia stepped towards me. I stepped back against the wall, directly over the drain. A powerful stench of excreta and urine rose into my nostrils.

  He stepped closer. 'Well? You don't want them to find you with piss all over your toga, do you, along with all the blood?'

  A figure appeared behind him — another spectator come to use the drains. I thought Glaucia might glance around for just an instant, long enough so that I could rush him, perhaps kick him between the legs — but Glaucia only smiled at me and held up his blade so that the newcomer could see it. The stranger vanished without so much as a gasp.

  Glaucia shook his head. 'Now I can't give you a choice,' he said. 'Now I'll have to make it quick.'

  He was big. He was also clumsy. He lunged and I was able to elude him with surprising ease. I pulled out my own blade, thinking I might not have to use it after all; not if I could simply slip past him. I dashed for open ground, slipped on the piss-covered floor, and fell face-first onto the hard stones.

  The knife was jarred from my hand and went skidding away. I crawled desperately after it. It was still an arm's length away when something enormously powerful struck my shoulders and knocked me flat.

  Glaucia kicked me in the ribs several times and then flipped me over. His grinning face, looming enormous as he descended on me, was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. So this is how it shall be, I thought: I shall die not as an old man with a toothless Bethesda crooning in my ear and the perfume of my garden in my nostrils, but choked by the stench of an unwashed latrine, with a hideous assassin drooling spittle on my face, and the echo of Cicero's voice droning in my ears.

  There was a skittering sound, like a knife skipping over stones, and something sharp jabbed my side. I honestly believed, with the kind of faith reserved for the purist vestals, that my knife had somehow come skidding back to me, simply because I willed it to. I might have reached for it had I not been using both arms in a failing attempt to hold Glaucia off me. I stared into his eyes, fascinated by the sheer hatred I saw there. Suddenly he looked up, and in the next instant there was a stone the size of a bread loaf somehow attached to his bandaged forehead, as if it had popped out of his brain, like Minerva from Jupiter's brow. It stayed there, as if glued to the spot by the blood that abruptly oozed about the connection — no, the stone was held there by the two hands that had brought it crashing down. I rolled up my eyes and saw Tiro upside-down against a blue sky above.

  He did not look happy to see me. He kept hissing something at me, over and over, until my hand (not my ear) finally apprehended the word knife. I somehow twisted my arm in an impossible backwards bend, snatched my knife from where Tiro had kicked it and snapped it upright before my chest. There is no word in Latin, but there should be one, for the weird sensation of recognition I felt, as if I had done the exact thing once before. Tiro lifted the heavy stone and brought it down again on Glaucia's already smashed forehead, and the giant collapsed like a mountain on top of me, impaling his exploding heart upon the full length of Eco's blade.

  'Suffer this wickedness no longer to stalk abroad in the land' a distant voice was crying. 'Banish it! Deny it! Reject it! It has delivered many Romans to a terrible death. But worse than that, it has robbed our spirits. By besieging us with cruelty hour upon hour, day after day, it has benumbed us; it has stifled all pity in a people once known as the most merciful on earth. When at every moment in all directions we see and hear acts of violence; when we are lost in a relentless storm of cruelty and deceit; then even the kindest and gentlest among us may lose all semblance of human compassion.'

  There was a pause, and then a great echoing thunder of applause. Confused and covered with blood, I thought for a moment that the cheering must be for me. The walls of the latrine did, after all, look something like the walls of an arena, and Glaucia was as dead as any dead gladiator. But gazing up I could see only Tiro, who was straightening his tunic with a look of exasperation and disgust

  'I wasn't there for the summation!' he snapped. 'Cicero will be furious. By Hercules! At least there's no blood on me.' With that he turned and disappeared, leaving me buried beneath a great quivering mass of dead flesh.

  Cicero won his case. An overwhelming majority of the seventy-five judges, including the praetor Marcus Fannius, voted to acquit Sextus Roscius of the charge of parricide. Only the most partisan Sullans, including a handful of new senators who had been appointed directly by the dictator, cast votes of guilty.

  The crowd was equally impressed. Cicero's name, along with bits and pieces of his oration, was spread all over Rome. For days afterwards one might walk by the open windows of a tavern or a smithy and hear men who had not even been there repeat some of Cicero's choice jabs at Sulla or exclaim at his audacity in attacking Chrysogonus. His comments on farm and family life, his respect for filial duty and the gods were noted with approval. Overnight he gained a reputation as a brave and pious Roman, an upholder of justice and of truth.

  That evening a small celebration was held in the home of Caecilia Metella. Rufus was there, glowing and triumphant and drinking a bit too much wine. So were those who had sat with Cicero at the bench of the accused, Marcus Metellus and Publius Scipio, along with a handful of others who had assisted the defence behind the scenes in some way. Sextus Roscius was given a couch at his hostess's right hand; his wife and eldest daughter sat demurely in chairs behind him. Tiro was allowed to sit behind his master so that he could take part in the celebration. Even I was invited and given my own couch to recline upon and assigned my own slave to fetch dainties from the table.

  Roscius may have been the guest of honour, but all conversation

  revolved around Cicero. His fellow advocates cited the finer points of his oration with gushing praise; they picked at Erurius's performance with devastating sarcasm and laughed out loud recalling the look on his face when Cicero first dared to utter the name of the Golden-Born. Cicero accepted their praise with genial modesty. He consented to drink a modicum of wine; it took very little to bring a flush to his cheeks. Throwing aside his usual caution and no doubt famished from fasting and exertion, he ate like a horse. Caecilia praised his appetite and said it was a good thing he had made a victory party possible, or else all the delicacies she had ordered her staff to prepare in advance — sea nettles and scallops, thrushes on asparagus, purple fish in murex, figpeckers in fruit compote, stewed sow's udders, fattened fowls in pastry, duck, boar, and oysters ad nauseam — would have ended up being dumped
in a Subura alley for the poor.

  I began to wonder, as I sent my slave after a third helping of Bithynian mushrooms, if the celebration was not a little premature. Sextus Roscius had won his life, to be sure, but he still remained in limbo, his property in the hands of his enemies, his rights as a citizen cancelled by proscription, his father's murder unavenged. He had eluded destruction, but what were his chances of reclaiming a decent life? His advocates were in no mood to worry about the future. I kept my mouth shut, except to laugh at their jokes or to stuff it with more mushrooms.

  All night Rufus gazed at Cicero with a passionate longing that seemed invisible to everyone but me; after witnessing Cicero's performance that day, how could I belittle Rufus's unrequited ardour? Tiro seemed quite content, laughing at every joke and even making bold to add a few of his own, but every now and then he glanced towards Roscia with pain in his eyes. Roscia steadfastly refused to look back. She sat in her chair, stiff and miserable, ate nothing, and finally begged her father and her hostess to excuse her. As she hurried from the room she began to weep. Her mother rose and ran after her.

  Roscia's exit set off a peculiar contagion of weeping. First it struck Caecilia, who was drinking faster than anyone else. All night she had been vivacious and full of laughter. Roscia's exit plunged her into a sudden funk. 'I know,' she said, as we listened to Roscia sobbing from the hallway, 'I know why that girl weeps. Yes, I do.' She nodded tipsily. 'She misses her dear, dear old grandfather. Oh, my, what a sweet man he was. We must never forget what really brings us together here on this night — the untimely death of my dearest, dearest Sextus. Beloved Sextus. Who knows, had I not been barren all these years…' She reached up and blindly fussed with her hair, pricking her ringer on the silver needle. A bead of blood welled up on her fingertip. She stared at the wound with a shudder and began to cry.

  Rufus was instantly at her side, comforting her, keeping her from saying something that might embarrass her later.

  Then Sextus Roscius began to weep. He struggled against it, biting his knuckles and contorting his face, but the tears would not be stopped. They ran down his face onto his chin and dripped onto the sea nettles on his plate. He sucked in a halting breath and expelled it in a long, shuddering moan. He covered his face with his hands and was convulsed with weeping. He knocked his plate to the floor; a slave retrieved it. His sobs were loud and choking, like a donkey's braying. It took many repetitions before I recognized the word he cried out again and again: 'Father, Father, Father…'

  He had been his usual self for most of the night — quiet and glum, only occasionally consenting to smile when the rest of us roared at some clever joke against Erucius or Chrysogonus. Even when the verdict was announced, so Rufus told me, he had remained oddly impassive. Having lived so long in dread, he held his relief in check until it came bursting out. That was why he wept.

  Or so I thought.

  It seemed a good time to leave.

  Publius Scipio and Marcus Metellus and their noble friends bade us good night and went their separate ways; Rufus stayed behind with Caecilia. I was anxious to sleep in my own bed, but Bethesda was still at Cicero's and the way to the Subura was long. In the good-natured flush of his success, Cicero insisted that I spend a final night beneath his roof.

  Had I not gone with him, this storey would have its ending here, amid half-truths and false surmises. Instead I walked beside Cicero, flanked by his torchbearers and bodyguards, through the moonlit Forum and up the spur of the Capitoline until we came to his house.

  Thus I came face to face at last with the most fortunate man alive. Thus I learned the truth, which until then I had only dimly suspected.

  Cicero and I were chatting amiably about nothing in particular

  — the long hot spell, the austere beauty of Rome beneath a full moon, the smells that filled the city at night. We rounded the corner and stepped into the street where he lived. It was Tiro who first noticed the retinue encamped like a small army about the entrance to Cicero's house. He clutched his master's toga and pointed open-mouthed.

  We saw the company before they saw us — the empty litter and the litter bearers who leaned against it with folded arms, the torchbearers who slouched against the wall and held their flames at lazy angles. Beneath the flickering light some menials played trigon on the curb, while a few secretaries squinted and scribbled on parchments. There were also a number of armed guards. It was one of these who spotted us standing stock-still at the end of the street and nudged an expensively dressed slave who was busy wagering on the trigon players. The slave drew himself up and came striding haughtily towards us.

  'You are the orator Cicero, the master of this house?'

  ‘I am.'

  'At last! You'll excuse the entourage camped on your doorstep —

  there seemed to be nowhere else to put everybody. And of course you'll excuse my master for paying a visit at such a late hour; actually we've been here a rather long time, since just after sunset, awaiting your return.'

  'I see,' Cicero said dully. 'And where is your master?'

  'He waits within. I convinced your doorkeeper that there was no point in keeping Lucius Sulla standing on the doorstep, even if his host was not home to greet him. Come, please.' The slave stepped back and gestured for us to follow. 'My master has been waiting for a long time. He is a very busy man. You can leave your torchbearers and bodyguards here,' he added sternly.

  Beside me Cicero took deep, even breaths, like a man preparing to plunge into icy water. I imagined I could hear his heartbeat in the stillness of the night, until I realized it was my own. Tiro still clutched his master's toga. He bit his lip. 'You don't think, master — he wouldn't dare, not in your own home—'

  Cicero silenced him by raising his forefinger to his lips. He stepped forward, motioning for the bodyguards to stay behind. Tiro and I followed.

  As we made our way to the doorstep, the members of Sulla's retinue went about their business, giving us only quick, sullen glances, as if we were to blame for their boredom. Tiro stepped ahead to open the door. He peered inside as if he expected a thicket of drawn daggers.

  But there was no one in the vestibule except Old Tiro, who came shuffling up to Cicero in a panic. 'Master—'

  Cicero quieted him with a nod and a touch on the shoulder and walked on.

  I had expected to see more of Sulla's retinue within — more bodyguards, more clerks, more flatterers and sycophants. But the house was populated only by Cicero's regular staff, all of whom were skirting the walls and trying to pretend invisibility.

  We found him sitting alone in the study beneath a lit lamp, with a half-empty bowl of wheat pudding on the table beside him and a scroll in his lap. He looked up as we entered. He appeared neither impatient nor startled, only vaguely bored. He put the scroll aside and raised one eyebrow.

  'You are a man of considerable erudition and passably good taste, Marcus Tullius Cicero. While I find far too many dull, dry works on grammar and rhetoric in this room, I am heartened to see such a fine collection of plays, especially by the Greeks. And while you appear to have intentionally collected the very worst of the Latin poets, that may be forgiven for your discernment in selecting this exceedingly fine copy of Euripides — from the workshop of Epicles in Athens, I see. When I was young I often entertained the fantasy of becoming an actor. I always thought I would have made a very poignant Pentheus. Or do you imagine I would have made a better Dionysus? Do you know The Bacchae well?'

  Cicero swallowed hard. 'Lucius Cornelius Sulla, I am honoured that you should visit my home—'

  'Enough of that nonsense!' Sulla snapped, pursing his lips. It was impossible to tell whether he was irritated or amused. 'There's no one else here. Don't waste your breath and my patience on meaningless formalities. The fact is that you're deeply distressed to find me here and you wish that I'd leave as quickly as possible.'

  Cicero parted his lips and made half a nod, unsure whether to answer or not.

  Sulla made the
same face again — half-amused, half-irritated. He waved impatiently about the room. 'I think there are enough chairs for all. Sit.'

  Tiro nervously fetched a chair for Cicero and another for me and then stood at his master's right hand, watching Sulla as if he were an exotic and very deadly reptile.

  I had never seen Sulla from so close. The lamplight from above cast stark shadows across his face, lining his mouth with wrinkles and making his eyes glitter. His great leonine mane, once famous for its lustre, had grown coarse and dull. His skin was splotched and discoloured, dotted with blemishes and etched all over with red veins as fine as bee's hair. His lips were dry and cracked. A tuft of dark hairs poked out of one nostril.

  He was simply an old general, an aging debauchee, a tired politician. His eyes had seen everything and feared nothing. They had witnessed every extreme of beauty and horror and could no longer be impressed. Yet there was still a hunger in them, something that seemed almost to leap out and grasp at my throat when he turned his gaze on me.

  'You must be Gordianus, the one they call the Finder. Good, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to have a look at you as well.'

  He looked lazily from Cicero to me and back again, laughing at us behind his eyes, testing our patience. 'You can guess why I've come,' he finally said. 'A certain trivial legal affair that came up earlier today at the Rostra. I was hardly aware of the matter until it was rather rudely brought to my attention while I was taking my lunch. A slave of my dear freedman Chrysogonus came running in all flustered and alarmed, raving about a catastrophe in the Forum. I was busy at the moment devouring a very spicy pheasant's breast; the news gave me a wicked case of indigestion. This porridge your kitchen maid brought me isn't bad — bland but soothing, just as my physicians recommend. Of course it might have been poisoned, but then you were hardly expecting me, were you? Anyway, I've always found it best to plunge into peril without giving it too much thought. I never called myself Sulla the Wise, only Sulla the Fortunate, which to my belief is much better.'