Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (34 page)

With a great wrenching twist, as if we were acrobats out of step, we reeled to the floor. We grappled like drowning men pounded by surf, so that I never knew up from down. The tip of the dagger kept nipping at my throat, but each time I managed to push his arm off-course. He was absurdly strong, more like a storm or an avalanche than a man. I felt like a boy struggling against him. I had no hope of defeating him. It was all I could do to stay alive from one moment to the next.

I suddenly thought of Bethesda, and knew she must already be dead, along with Zoticus. Why had he saved me for last? That was when the truncheon came crashing down against Redbeard’s skull.

While he swayed atop me, dazed, I caught a glimpse of Bethesda over his shoulder. In her hands she held the wooden slat for barring the door. It was so heavy she could barely wield it. She began to lift it again and then tripped beneath the weight and staggered backwards. Redbeard regained his senses. Blood ran downward from a cut in the back of his head, trickling into his beard and mouth, making him look like a crazed animal or a wolf-man gorged on blood. He rose to his knees and twisted around, raising his dagger. I struck at his chest, but I had no leverage.

Bethesda stood upright with the truncheon raised. Redbeard slashed with the dagger, but he only succeeded in slicing her gown. Quickly he spun around the other way and clutched a fistful of cloth with his free hand. He yanked hard and Bethesda fell backwards. The truncheon descended, powered by its own weight. By aim or accident it struck Redbeard square on the crown of his head, and as he toppled onto me I seized his stabbing arm and twisted it towards his chest.

The blade plunged hilt-deep into his heart. His face was above mine, his eyes rolled up, his mouth wide open. I reeled from the stench of garlic and rotten teeth as he sucked in a desperate, rattling breath. Then he jolted and pitched atop me as something exploded inside him. An instant later blood poured from his open mouth like the discharge from a sewer.

Somewhere far away Bethesda screamed. A great massive dead thing lay slick and heavy atop me, convulsing and belching venom, blinding me and flooding my nostrils and mouth, even clogging my ears with its blood. I struggled to escape and lay helpless until I felt Bethesda pushing alongside me. The great corpse rolled onto its back and stared slack-jawed at the ceiling.

I staggered to my knees. We clutched each other, both trembling so badly we could hardly connect. I spat blood and snorted and wiped my face on the bodice of her clean white gown. We stroked each other and babbled pointless words of comfort and assurance, like mutual survivors of a great devastation.

The lamp burned low and sputtered, casting lurid shadows and making the rigid corpses seem to twitch. The weird geography of the night reigned unbroken: we were lovers in a poem, one naked and the other half-dressed, hugging on our knees beside a vast, still lake. But the lake was made of blood – so much blood that I could see my own reflection in it. I stared into my eyes and with a shock I came to my senses, and finally knew that I was not in a nightmare but in the very heart of the great, slumbering city of Rome.

XXII

‘Clearly,’ I said, ‘the message was meant as a warning to
you,
Cicero.’

‘But if he intended to murder you and your slave, why didn’t he get the bloodshed over with first? Why didn’t he go ahead and kill you in your sleep and then write the message?’

I shrugged. ‘Because he already had enough blood at hand, pouring out of Zoticus’s slashed throat. Because the house was still, and he had no fear that I would wake. Because by having the message already written, in case there was some unforeseen complication or if we died screaming, he could flee the house immediately. Or perhaps he was waiting for another assassin to join him. I don’t know, Cicero, I can’t speak for a dead man. But he meant to kill me, of that I’m certain. And the warning was for you.’

The moon had fallen. The night was at its darkest, though dawn could not be far off. Bethesda was somewhere in the slave quarters, fast asleep, I hoped. Rufus, Tiro, and I sat together in Cicero’s study surrounded by sputtering braziers. Our host paced back and forth, grimacing and rubbing his chin.

His face was haggard and his jaw was covered with stubble, but his eyes were bright and glittering, far from sleepy – so he had looked when Bethesda and I had come rapping at his door after fleeing across half the city in the middle of the night. Remarkably, Cicero had still been awake and his house brightly lit. A puffy-eyed slave had led us to the study, where Cicero paced with a sheaf of parchment in his hands, reading aloud and drinking from a bowl of steaming leek soup – Hortensius’s secret recipe for sweetening the voice.

With Tiro transcribing, he had almost finished his first provisional draft of his oration in defence of Sextus Roscius, having worked at it ceaselessly all night. He had been trying it out for Tiro and Rufus when we arrived, blood-soaked and shivering, at his door.

Bethesda had quickly disappeared, huddled against Cicero’s chief housekeeper, who promised to take care of her. Cicero had insisted that I wash and put on a fresh tunic before I did anything else. I had done the best I could, but in the lamplight of his study I kept noticing tiny flecks of dried blood on my fingernails and bare feet.

‘So now there are two dead bodies in your house,’ Cicero said, rolling his eyes. ‘Ah, well, I’ll send someone over tomorrow to take care of the corpses. More expenses! No doubt the owner of this Zoticus won’t be pleased at having a dead body returned to him; there’ll have to be a settlement. You’re like a bottomless well I keep pitching coins into, Gordianus.’

‘This message,’ Rufus interrupted, looking pensive, ‘how did it read again, exactly?’

I shut my eyes and saw each word in vivid red, lit by a wavering lamp: ‘ “The fool disobeyed. Now he is dead. Let a wiser man take a holiday come the holy Ides of May.” He also appeared to have been touching up the older message with fresh blood.’

‘Quite meticulous,’ said Cicero.

‘Yes, and a better speller than Mallius Glaucia. His letters were well made, and he seems to have been working not from paper but from memory. A slave from a better class of master.’

‘They say Chrysogonus keeps gladiators who can read and write,’ said Rufus.

‘Yes, too bad you had to kill this Redbeard,’ Cicero said reproachfully. ‘Otherwise we might have learned who sent him.’

‘But he said he came from you, Cicero.’

‘You needn’t take that sarcastic tone, Gordianus. Of course I didn’t send him. You were to hire a bodyguard on your own and I would pay, that was our agreement. To be quite honest, I forgot about the arrangement entirely once you were gone. I started working on my notes for the defence and didn’t give it another thought.’

‘And yet, when he came to my door, he distinctly told my slave that he had been sent by you. It was a deliberate ruse, calculated to deceive me; that means whoever sent him
knew
of the arrangement we had made only hours before, that you would pay for a single guard to protect my house. How can that be, Cicero? The only people who knew of that discussion were the same ones who are in this room at this moment.’

I stared at Rufus. He blushed and lowered his eyes. Love frustrated may turn to hate, and thwarted desire may long for vengeance. All along he had been a viper, I thought, entrusted with the heart of Cicero’s strategy and meanwhile plotting its perversion. You can never trust a noble, I thought, no matter how young and innocent he may appear. Somehow the enemies of Sextus Roscius had twisted his motives to their own ends. He had actually been willing to sacrifice my life and that of Sextus Roscius to see Cicero brought low – it seemed impossible, looking at his boyish face and freckled nose, but of such stuff are Romans made.

I was about to accuse him out loud and expose his secrets – his hidden passion for Cicero, his treachery – but at that instant whatever god had saved my life that night chose to save my honour as well, and I was spared from humiliating myself before a generous client and his highborn admirer.

Tiro made a stifled, choking noise, as if he tried to clear his throat and failed.

As one we turned to look at him. His face was the very image of guilt – blinking, blushing, gnawing his lip.

‘Tiro?’ Cicero’s voice was high and hoarse, despite the leek soup. Yet his face betrayed only mild consternation, as if reserving judgment in expectation of a quite simple and satisfactory explanation.

Rufus glanced at me with fire in his eyes, as if to say: And how could you have doubted
me?
‘Yes, Tiro,’ he said, folding his arms and looking down his freckled nose. ‘Is there something you wish to explain to us?’ He was more haughty than I could have imagined him. That cold, implacable gaze – is it a mask all nobles carry with them for use at a moment’s notice, or is it the one true face they show when all their other masks have fallen away?

Tiro bit his knuckles and began to weep. Suddenly I knew the truth.

‘The girl,’ I whispered. ‘Roscia.’

Tiro hid his face and sobbed aloud.

Cicero was furious. He paced the room like a wolf. There were times, as he passed by Tiro, who sat meekly wringing his hands and sniffling, when I thought he would actually strike the poor slave. Instead he threw his hands in the air and shouted at the top of his lungs until he was so hoarse he could hardly speak.

Occasionally Rufus tried to interpose himself, taking on the role of the all-comprehending, all-forgiving noble. He wore the part uneasily. ‘But, Cicero, such things happen all the time. Besides, Caecilia need never know.’ He reached up to take Cicero by the hand, but Cicero angrily snatched his arm away, blind to Rufus’s pained reaction.

‘While her household laughs at her behind her back? No, no, Caecilia may have been fooled, just as I was fooled, but you don’t think her slaves weren’t onto it? There’s nothing worse, nothing, than having a scandal take place beneath the very nose of a Roman matron while her slaves laugh behind her back. And to think that I brought such shame into her house! I can never face her again.’

Tiro sniffled and flinched as Cicero swept by. I scratched at the blood on my fingernails and winced at the first intimations of a headache. The light in the atrium showed the first faint blush of dawn.

‘Whip him if you must, Cicero. Or have him strangled,’ I said. ‘It’s your right, after all, and no man would object. But save your voice for the trial. By shouting you only punish Rufus and me.’

Cicero went rigid and scowled at me. At least I had put a stop to his constant pacing.

‘Tiro may have acted stupidly and even immorally,’ I went on. ‘Or it may be that he simply acted like any young man eager for love. But there is no reason to believe that he betrayed you, betrayed us, at least knowingly. He was duped. It’s a very old story.’

For a moment Cicero seemed to grow calm, drawing deep breaths and staring at the floor. Then he exploded again. ‘How many times?’ he demanded, throwing his hands in the air. ‘How many?’ We had already gone over this, but the number of times seemed particularly to irritate him.

‘Five, I think. Maybe six,’ Tiro answered meekly, just as he had answered every other time Cicero asked the same question.

‘Beginning with the first time, the very first time I visited Caecilia Metella’s house. How could you have done such a thing? And then, to have gone on doing it in secret, behind my back, behind the backs of her father and her father’s patroness, in her very house! Had you no sense of decency? Of propriety? What if you had been discovered? I would have had no choice but to have given you the direst punishment on the spot! And I would have been held accountable. Her father could have brought suit against me, could have ruined me.’ His voice had grown so hoarse and grating it made me wince to hear it.

‘Hardly likely,’ Rufus yawned, ‘considering his circumstances.’

‘That makes no difference! Really, Tiro, I see no way out of this. Every suitable punishment I can think of is so severe that it makes me shudder. And yet I see no alternative.’

‘You could always forgive him,’ I suggested, rubbing my sore eyes.

‘No! No, no, no! If Tiro were some simple, ignorant labourer, a slave from the bottom rung, a man hardly better than a beast, then his behaviour might be excusable – he would still have to be punished, of course, but at least the crime would be comprehensible. But Tiro is an educated slave, more knowledgeable in the laws than many a citizen. What he did with the young Roscia was not the act of an ignorant creature of impulse, but the conscious choice of a well-taught slave whose master has clearly been much too lenient and much, much too trusting.’