He dabbled his forefinger in the porridge for a moment, then suddenly swept his arm across the table and sent bowl and porridge crashing to the floor. A slave came running from the hallway. She saw Cicero's wide-eyed, blanching face and quickly disappeared.
Sulla popped his finger into his mouth and pulled it out clean, then went on in a calm, melodious voice. 'What a struggle it seems to have been for both of you, rooting and digging and sniffing for the truth about these disgustingly petty Roscii and their disgustingly petty crimes against one another. I'm told you've spent hour upon hour, day after day grappling for the facts; that you went all the way to godforsaken Ameria and back, Gordianus, that you put your very life in danger more than once, all for a few meagre scraps of the truth. And you still haven't got the full story — like a play with whole scenes missing. Isn't it funny? I had never even heard the name Sextus Roscius until today, and it took me only a matter of hours — minutes, really — to find out everything worth knowing about the case. I simply summoned certain parties before me and demanded the full story. Sometimes I think justice must have been so much simpler and easier in the days of King Numa.'
Sulla paused for a moment and toyed with the scroll in his lap. He caressed the stitches that bound the sheets and dabbled his fingers over the smooth parchment, then suddenly seized it in a crushing grasp and sent it flying across the room. It landed atop a table of scrolls and knocked them to the floor. Sulla went on unperturbed.
'Tell me, Marcus Tullius Cicero, what was your intention when you took it upon yourself to plead this wretched man's case in court today? Were you the willing agent of my enemies, or did they dupe you into it? Are you cunningly clever, or absurdly stupid?'
Cicero's voice was as dry as parchment: 'I was asked to represent an innocent man against an outrageous accusation. If the law is not the last refuge of the innocent—'
'Innocent?' Sulla leaned forwards in his chair. His face was plunged into shadow. The lamp cast an aureole about his fire-coloured hair. 'Is that what they told you, my dear old friends, the Metelli? A very old and very great family, those Metelli. I've been waiting for them to stab me in the back ever since I divorced Delmaticus's daughter while she lay dying. What else could I do? It was the augurs and pontifices who insisted; I could not allow her to pollute my house with her illness. And this is how my former in-laws take their revenge — using an advocate with no family and a joke of a name to embarrass me in the courts. What good is being a dictator when the very class of people you struggle so hard to please turn on you for such petty causes?
'What did they offer you, Cicero? Money? Promises of their patronage? Political support?'
I glanced at Cicero, whose face was set like stone. I could hardly trust my eyes in the flickering light, but it seemed that the corners of his mouth began to turn up in a very faint smile. Tiro must have noticed it as well; a strange look darkened his face, like a premonition of dismay.
'Which of them came to you, Cicero? Marcus Metellus, that idiot who dared to show his face at the bench with you today? Or his cousin Caecilia Metella, that mad old insomniac? Or not a Metellus at all, but one of their agents? Surely not my new brother-in-law Hortensius — he'll represent his worst enemy for money, Jupiter knows, but he was smart enough not to involve himself in this farce. A pity I can't say as much for Valeria's darling little brother, Rufus.'
Cicero still said nothing. Tiro wrinkled his brow impatiently and fidgeted.
Sulla sat back. The lamplight crept over his brow and into his eyes, which sparkled like glass beads. 'No matter. The Metelli recruited you against me, one way or another. So they told you this Sextus Roscius was innocent. And did you believe them?'
Tiro could stand it no more. 'Of course!' he blurted out. 'Because he is. That's why my master defended him — not to put himself into the pocket of a noble family—'
Cicero silenced him with a gentle touch on the wrist. Sulla looked at Tiro and raised an appraising eyebrow, as if noticing him for the first time. 'The slave is hardly handsome enough to be allowed to get away with that type of insolence. If you were any sort of Roman, Cicero, you'd have him beaten to within a knuckle of his life here on the spot.'
Cicero's smile wavered. 'Please, Lucius Sulla, forgive his impertinence.'
'Then answer the question instead of letting your slave answer it for you. When they told you Sextus Roscius was innocent, did you believe them?'
"Yes, I did,' Cicero sighed. He pressed his fingertips together and flexed the knuckles. He glanced at me briefly and then stared at his knuckles. 'At first.'
'Ah.' It was Sulla now who wore a faint, inscrutable smile. 'I thought you seemed too clever to have been fooled for long. When did you figure out the truth?'
Cicero shrugged. 'I suspected it almost from the beginning, not that it ever made a difference. There still is no proof that Sextus Roscius conspired with his cousins to have the old man murdered.'
'No proof Sulla laughed. 'You advocates! Always on one hand there is evidence and proof. And on the other there is truth.' He shook his head. 'These greedy fools, Capito and Magnus, thinking they could have their cousin Sextus convicted without confessing their own part in the crime. How could Chrysogonus ever have got himself mixed up with such trash?'
'I don't understand,' Tiro whispered. The look on his face might have been comic had it not been betrayed by such pain and confusion. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for myself Until that moment I had been struggling to hold on to the same illusion that Tiro clung to so effortlessly — the belief that all our work for Sextus Roscius had a higher purpose than politics or ambition, that we had served something called justice. The belief that Sextus Roscius was innocent, after all.
Sulla raised an eyebrow and harrumphed. 'Your insolent slave does not understand, Cicero. Aren't you an enlightened Roman? Don't you see to the boy's education? Explain it for him.'
Cicero turned heavy-lidded and studied his fingers. 'I thought you knew the truth by now, Tiro. I thought you would have figured it out for yourself. Honestly, I did. Gordianus knows, I think. Don't you, Gordianus? Let him explain it. That's what he's paid for.'
Tiro looked at me so plaintively I found myself speaking against my will. 'It was all because of the whore,' I said. 'You remember, Tiro, the young girl called Elena who worked at the House of Swans.'
Sulla nodded sagely but raised a finger to interrupt. 'You've jumped ahead of the story. The younger brother…'
'Gaius Roscius, yes. Murdered by his brother in their home in
Ameria. Perhaps the locals were fooled, but his symptoms were hardly caused by eating a pickled mushroom.' 'Colocynth,' Cicero suggested.
'Wild gourd? Possibly,' I said, 'especially in conjunction with some more palatable poison. I knew of an incident in Antioch once with very similar symptoms — the clear bile vomited up, followed by a surge of blood and immediate death. Perhaps Sextus was colluding with his cousin Magnus even then. A man with Magnus's connections can find just about any sort of poison in Rome, for a price.
'As for the motive, Sextus Roscius pater almost certainly intended to disinherit his elder son in favour of Gaius, or so at least Sextus filius was convinced. A commonplace crime for a commonplace motive. But that wasn't the end of it.
'Perhaps the old man suspected Sextus of killing Gaius. Perhaps he simply detested him so much he was looking for any excuse to disinherit him. At the same time he was becoming infatuated with the pretty young whore Elena. When she became pregnant, whether by Roscius or not, the old man hatched a scheme to buy her, liberate her, and adopt the freeborn child. Evidently he wasn't able to buy her right away; probably he bungled the purchase — the brothel owner sniffed his eagerness and drove the price absurdly high, thinking he could take advantage of an addled, lovesick old widower. This is only speculation—'
'More than speculation,' Sulla said. 'There is, or was, concrete evidence: a letter addressed to his son and dictated by the elder Roscius to his slave Felix, who thus knew the co
ntents. According to Felix, the old man was in a drunken rage. In the letter he explicidy threatened to do what you have just described — disinherit Sextus Roscius in favour of a son as yet unborn. The document was subsequently destroyed, but the slave remembers.'
Sulla paused for me to continue. Tiro looked at Cicero, who did not look back, and then desperately at me. 'So Sextus Roscius decided to kill his father,' I said. 'Naturally he couldn't do it himself, and another poisoning would be far too suspicious; besides, the two were so estranged he had no easy access to the old man. So he called on his cousins Magnus and Capito. Perhaps they had assisted in Gaius's poisoning; perhaps they were already pressuring Sextus to do away with his father. The three of them formed a conspiracy. Sextus would inherit his father's estates and pay off his cousins later. There must have been assurances…;'
'Indeed,' said Sulla, 'there was a written contract of sorts. A statement of intent, if you will, to do away with old Roscius, signed by all three of them in triplicate. A copy for each, so they could all blackmail one another to a stalemate if things fell apart.'
'But things did fall apart,' I said.
'Yes.' Sulla curled his lip, as if the whole affair had a smell. 'After the murder Sextus Roscius tried to double-cross his cousins. He became sole owner of the estates by inheritance; how could they take what was his when the document they had all signed was equally incriminating to each? Sextus Roscius must have thought himself very clever; what a fool he was to try to break his bargain with the likes of those vultures.'
Sulla took a breath and continued. 'It seems it was Capito who came up with the false proscription ploy; Magnus knew Chrysogonus from some shady transaction or other and approached him with the scheme — how many times have I warned that boy not to let his avarice cloud his better judgment? Ah, well! The estates were proscribed and seized by the state; Chrysogonus bought them up himself and in turn shared them as agreed beforehand with Capito and Magnus. Sextus Roscius was left in the cold. What a fool he must have felt! What could he do? Run to the authorities waving a piece of paper that implicated himself along with the others in his father's murder?
'Of course there was always the possibility that in a fit of madness or guilt he might do just that, and so Capito allowed Sextus to stay on at the old family estate where he could keep an eye on him, living in poverty and humiliation. What grudges these country cousins all harboured for one another!'
Tiro, not daring to speak to Sulla, looked at me. 'But what about Elena?'
I opened my mouth to speak, but Sulla was too deep in the telling to pass the story to another. 'All the while Sextus Roscius was scheming to get back his estate somehow or other. That meant that the whore's child might still some day be his rival, or at least his enemy. Imagme him brooding day after day on the uselessness of his crime, the vileness of it; on the bitterness of Fortune, his own guilt, his ruined family. And it was all because of Elena and her child that he had first embroiled himself in the plot to kill his father! When the baby was born, Roscius killed it with his own hand.'
'And might as well have killed Elena,' I said.
'What was the shame of more blood on his hands after all his crimes?' Sulla asked, and I realized he had no sense at all of the irony of his words, spoken by one who was awash in the blood of others up to his chin. 'It was not too long afterwards that the cousins managed to get hold of Sextus's copy of the incriminating agreement. Without it he was defenceless; he had no check on them. No doubt they were turning over various ways to murder him and his family when he made his escape, first to a friend in Ameria, a certain Titus Megarus, and then to Caecilia Metella in Rome. Since he had slipped from their clutches, the cousins' only recourse was to destroy him via the law. Since he was in fact guilty of his father's murder; they naively thought they could reconstruct a narration of the events to leave themselves out of the picture. And of course they were counting on the intimidation of Chrysogonus's name to drive away any competent orators from mounting a defence — if the matter even came to trial. By this point the state of Sextus Roscius's mind was so disturbed that they hoped he might be driven to suicide, or perhaps to simply confess his own guilt and mount no defence at all.'
'They were obscenely self-confident,' Cicero said softly.
'Were they?' Sulla mused. His voice carried a dark, brooding edge. 'Not excessively so. If this trial had taken place six months ago, do you think an advocate for the defence would have dared to utter Chrysogonus's name? To mention me by name? To bring up the proscriptions? Do you think a majority of judges in one of the courts reconstructed by me would have dared to flaunt their independence? Capito and Magnus were simply six months out of step, that's all. Six months ago the Metelli would not have lifted a finger to save Sextus Roscius. But now they sense my power waning; now they decide to test the limits of my prestige and sting me with a defeat in the courts. How these powerful old families chafe beneath the steady hand of a dictator, even when I have always used my power to enrich their coffers and hold the jealous masses in check. They want it all for themselves — like Magnus and Capito. Are you really so proud to be their champion, Cicero, to have saved a bloody parricide just so you could kick me in the balls, all in the name of old-fashioned Roman virtue?'
For a long rime Sulla and Cicero looked each other in the eye across the small space that separated them. Sulla suddenly looked to me very old and weary, and Cicero very young. But it was Cicero who dropped his gaze first.
'What becomes of Sextus Roscius now?' I said.
Sulla sat back and took a deep breath. 'He is a free man, exonerated by the law. A parricide, a fratricide twice over; does such a man deserve to live? But thanks to Cicero the wretch has become a sort of suffering hero, a petty little Prometheus chained to a rock. Peck at his entrails, as he deserves, and the people will be outraged. So, to Sextus Roscius, Fortune will be merciful.
'His father's estates will not be returned to him. That's what my most radical enemies would like — to see a duly recorded proscription rescinded, to see the state admit such an embarrassing error. No! That will never happen, not while I live. The Roscius estates will remain disposed as they are, but—'
Sulla made a face and bit his tongue as if he tasted worm-wood. 'But Chrysogonus will voluntarily give to Sextus Roscius other estates equal in value to those that were taken from him, located as far from Ameria as possible. Let Sextus Roscius the parricide return to the life he knew, as best he can and away from those who know him and his past; but the proscription stands, and he is stripped of his family estates and his civil rights. Knowing what you know of the man, can you really say this is unjust, Cicero?'
Cicero stroked his upper lip. 'And what of my safety, and the safety of those who've helped me? Certain men are not above murder.'
'There will be no further bloodshed, no reprisals by Magnus or Capito. As for the mysterious death of a certain Mallius Glaucia, whose body was discovered earner today, no doubt fittingly, in a public latrine — the incident is closed and forgotten. The creature never existed. I have been quite adamant with the Roscii on this point.'
Cicero narrowed his eyes. 'A bargain has two sides, Lucius Sulla.'
'Yes. Yes, indeed. I expect, Cicero, a certain restraint on your part. In return for my efforts on behalf of tranquility and order, from you there will be no prosecution of Capito or Magnus for murder; no official complaint against the proscription of Sextus Roscius pater, no charge of malicious prosecution brought against Gaius Erucius. Neither you nor any ofthe Metelli or their agents will mount any sort of lawsuit against Chrysogonus. I tell you this explicitly, Cicero, so that you can pass it on to your friends among the Metelli. Do you understand?' Cicero nodded.
Sulla rose. Age had weathered his face but had not stooped his shoulders. He seemed to fill the room. Next to him Cicero and Tiro looked like slender boys.
'You are a clever young man, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and by all accounts a splendid orator. You are either stupidly daring or madly ambitious, or per
haps both — just the kind of man my friends and I could use in the Forum. I would reach out my hand to recruit you, but you wouldn't take it, would you? Your young head is still too muddled with vague ideals — boldly defending republican virtue against cruel tyranny and that sort of thing. You have delusions of piety; delusions about your own nature. My other senses may be failing me, but I'm a wily old fox, and my nose is still keen, and in this room I smell another fox. Let me tell you this, Cicero: the path you've chosen in life leads to only one place in the end, and that is the place where I stand. Your path may not take you as far, but it will take you nowhere else. Look at me and see your mirror, Cicero.
'As for you, Finder. .' Sulla looked at me shrewdly. 'Not another fox, no; a dog, I think, the kind that goes about digging up bones that other dogs have buried. Don't you ever get sick of all that mud in your snout, not to mention the occasional worm up your nose? I might consider hiring you myself, but I shall soon have no need ever again for covert agents or bribed judges or scheming advocates.
'Yes, citizens, sad news: in a matter of days I shall announce my retirement from public life. My health fails me; so does my patience. I've done what I can to shore up the old aristocracy and to keep the common rabble in their place; let someone else take on the job of saving the Republic. I can hardly wait to begin a new life in the countryside — strolling, gardening, playing with my grandchildren. Oh, and finishing my memoirs! I shall be sure to send a complete copy for your library, Cicero.'
Sulla flashed a sour smile and drew himself up to depart; then his smile abruptly sweetened. He was looking over our heads towards the hallway. He raised one eyebrow and cocked his head, radiating charm. 'Rufus, dear boy,' he crooned, 'what an unexpected delight!'
I looked over my shoulder to see Rufus standing in the doorway, dishevelled and out of breath. 'Lucius Sulla,' he muttered with a nod, averting his eyes; that formal acknowledgment dispensed with, he turned to Cicero. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I saw his retinue outside. Of course I knew who it must be. I would have waited’ but the news… I ran all the way to tell you, Cicero.'
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