Murder on the Appian Way (49 page)

And there it was at my fingertips. I pulled it from the hole, found some weights and unrolled it on a table.

It was one of the oldest books I owned, but was still in good condition. The passage I was thinking of was at the very end, delivered by the chorus of frenzied Dionysian revellers:

The gods have many guises. The gods bring crises to climax while man surmises. The end anticipated has not been consummated. But god has found a way for what no man expected. So ends the play.

What no man expected ...

Could Cicero pull it off? Could he deliver a speech — one of those famous, logic-twisting, doubt-defying, hilarious, wrenching speeches of his — that would actually convince the jurors to declare Milo not guilty? It seemed impossible. But so had many another case where Cicero had snatched triumph from despair. If anyone could do it...

As I was rolling up the scroll, I ripped a bit of parchment at the top. I cursed. It was such an old scroll. When and where had I got it? Ah, yes: Cicero himself had given it to me, as he had given me many books since. This had been the first. He had even inscribed it, as I recalled.

I unrolled it enough to read the message he had written across the top, in his own hand:

To Gordianus, fondly, with bright hopes for the future.

My blood froze. I had known all along, of course. Still, to see the proof before me ...

I found the message that had been left for Bethesda and put it side by side with the scroll.

Do not fear for Gordianus and his son. They have not been harmed. They will be returned to you in time.

There could be no doubt. The proof was there in the peculiar shape of the letter G — indeed, in the way my name was written in each case.

I had looked at other messages from Cicero in my possession, but not one of them had been in his own hand. They had all been written by Tiro or some other secretary. But the dedication on
The Bacchae
was assuredly in his hand, for I had been there when he inscribed it.

Davus mumbled in his sleep when I shook him. The other bodyguards stirred in their beds. "Davus, wake up."

"What?" He blinked, then gave a start and jerked away from me as if I were a monster. "Master, please!" His voice cracked like a boy's. What in Hades was wrong with him?

"Davus, it's only me. Wake up. I need you. I'm going out."

The walk to Cicero's house had never seemed so long. My blood pounded in my ears. I didn't wake Eco to come with me, though he had as great a grievance against Cicero as I did. What I had to say to Cicero I would say by myself

XXXI

Cicero's doorkeeper perused me through the peephole. A little later he opened the door for me, allowing Davus to enter and wait in the foyer. The interior of the house was ablaze with lights. No one would be abed early in Cicero's house on this night.

As I was led to the study, I heard Cicero's voice echoing down the hallway, and then Tiro, laughing out loud.

I was shown into the room. Cicero and Tiro both greeted me with a smile.

"Gordianus!" Cicero stepped forward and embraced me before I could stop him. It was a politician's embrace; he seemed to encircle me completely and yet hardly touched me anywhere. He stepped back and looked at me like a shepherd at a lost lamb. "So, at the very last moment, you've come to me. Can I dare to hope, Gordianus, that this means you've come to your senses at last?"

"Oh, yes, Cicero. I have definitely come to my senses." My mouth was suddenly so dry that I could hardly speak.

"You sound like you need something to drink." Cicero nodded to the doorkeeper, who disappeared. "I should tell you, the speech is already pretty much done. But it's not set in stone. Better late than never."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, with the way you've been running back and forth to Fulvia's house, and all that time you spent with Marc Antony on the road, you must be well up on what the prosecution has in mind for tomorrow. I can use that sort of information to make sure that all

my rebuttals are on target. The fewer surprises they're able to spring on me, the better. Oh, Gordianus, you gave me a scare this time. I thought we had lost you for good. But here you are, back where you belong!"

I looked around the room. Tiro sat amid masses of rolled and rumpled parchment. "Is Caelius here? Where's Milo?" Merely saying his name made me clench my fists. I took a deep breath.

"Caelius is home, at his father's house, probably sleeping like a baby."

"Shouldn't he be here with you, working on his speech?"

"Actually... ah, here's something to wet your throat! Tiro, would you like a cup as well?"

I thought of refusing, but I needed the drink. I raised an eyebrow as it passed my lips. It must have been the best vintage in the house. "Isn't it a bit premature to be celebrating, Cicero?"

"Ah, you appreciate the Falernian. Good. Your appearance in my house is adequate cause for celebration, Gordianus." "Where's Milo?" I said.

"Not here, as you can see. He's at home with Fausta, I imagine, dreaming sweet dreams of the consulship that will be his next year. Did you especially want to see him?"

That was a difficult question to answer. "No," I said. I wanted to keep my head, and that might not be possible in Milo's presence. I finished my cup of wine.

"Gordianus, you look a fright! We must finish our business as quickly as we can, so that you can go home and get some sleep. Now, you asked about Caelius giving a speech. Actually, only one advocate will speak for Milo tomorrow: myself"

"The rest have all run scared, then? Even Caelius?"

I had finally managed to dampen his ebullience. "That's not the case at all. This idea that his friends have all deserted Milo is a vicious rumour put about by the Clodians, the same people who keep claiming that Milo wants to assassinate Pompey and bring down the state. They hope to make me look like a fool and to intimidate everyone else into abandoning Milo. But I'll tell you, the best men in Rome are still solidly behind Milo and would gladly have appeared as character witnesses on his behalf. But Pompey's reforms eliminated character witnesses! I could have had former magistrates and consuls lined up the whole length of the Forum, reciting Milo's virtues for hours. But Pompey wants only material witnesses to speak — people like that parade of disreputable characters we've had to put up with for the last three days."

"If Milo's friends are still behind him, why are you the only one giving a speech for him?"

"Again, Pompey's reforms! The defence is allowed only three hours — three hours! - to make a case. You know how it was before; a man usually had two or three advocates all speaking for as long as they wished. I hardly need to tell you that I'm usually just beginning to warm up after three hours. The simple truth is, I didn't want to share the time with anyone else. It's even worse for the prosecution; they have only two hours. Well, let their three advocates go tripping over one another, rushing through their notes. They'll make hasty, confused speeches, and then I shall use my time to draw the jurors slowly, steadily, irresistibly into our camp."

He poured himself a straight cup of the Falernian. When had Cicero begun to drink like other men? "Don't think I can't do it," he went on. "Wait until you hear the speech. It's my masterpiece, Gordianus. Am I boasting, Tiro, or am I simply telling the truth?"

Tiro smiled. "It's a very fine speech."

"I have never written a finer one! And my powers of delivery have never been greater. I shall seize the jurors from the first words, I shall clutch them to me like a lover until I have nothing more to say, and after I'm done I'll defy any man to take a stand against Milo."

Wine and curiosity had cooled my anger. I decided to listen for a while, bide my time and hear him out. It was the last time I would ever do so. Once I'd said what I'd come to say, there would never again be words between us of any sort. "How will you do it, Cicero? How will you seduce the jurors?"

"Well, I can't go through the whole speech for you right now; there isn't time." He smiled crookedly. "Besides, you might yet be a spy for the enemy, Gordianus. Have you come to ferret out my puns and double meanings before they're ready? I won't have my metaphors and historical allusions anticipated and headed off by the prosecutors! But I'll give you a general outline. Perhaps it will give you some ideas of how you might help me."

"Help you?"

"Perhaps there's a weak point in the prosecution that I've missed, something you know of that I don't; some point they intend to emphasize that I haven't foreseen. You've probably been privy to information which even my spies have missed. All that lolling about in Clodia's litter, making camp with Antony—you're a valuable man to know, Gordianus! I've always said so. And I've never turned my back on you, no matter how wrongheaded you've been from time to time. I can't tell you how glad I was when the doorkeeper came to say that you were here. I can think of no one I had rather see on this night. Gordianus the Finder, always full of surprises. 'He shall help me add the final crowning touches to my masterpiece' - I said those very words, did I not, Tiro?"

"You did indeed." Tiro looked very weary. With his delicate constitution, he should have been in bed, I thought. Or did he blink and lower his eyes to avoid looking at me? Had Tiro been part of the plot against me? The idea sickened me, but Tiro's loyalty to Cicero had always eclipsed everything else in his life.

"The main thrust of my argument," Cicero went on, full of excitement, "will be that it was Clodius who planned an ambush on Milo, and that Milo had no choice but to defend himself. It was justifiable homicide!"

"And what about the facts, Cicero?" I said..

"Oh, I shall remind the jury of certain facts - such as the fact that Clodius had a long history of criminal behaviour against the gods and the state. And the fact that even as he was setting out on the Appian Way, he had legislation in the works to reorganize the voting system so as to give himself and his rabble of freedmen even greater power. And I certainly shall not let anyone forget the fact that Clodius was one of the most lecherous and debauched men ever to plague this city."

"But Clodius did not ambush Milo. Must I say it more slowly? Clodius ... did not. .. ambush Milo."

Cicero paused. "This matter of an ambush, who plotted against whom, who was lying in wait — it's all academic in a way, don't you see? Consider it a literary device. My young friend Marcus Brutus says that I should argue from the assumption that Milo assassinated Clodius intentionally, knowingly and with foresight, and declare that the homicide was justifiable on the grounds that Milo acted to save the state from a dangerous man. Well, Brutus might get away with that argument, but not me. It would only remind the listeners of my own handling of Catilina and his supporters. Milo must not suffer for the controversies of my own consulship. So that line of defence is closed to us. On the other hand, I might argue that neither Milo nor his men were ultimately responsible for Clodius's death, at least not technically. That may well be the case, as I'm sure you discovered for yourself in your investigations —"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't be coy with me, Gordianus. It's much too late for that. However, to argue for Milo's outright innocence, I would have to introduce some rather arcane reasoning, and besides, that approach would fail to make any thematic sense; it would neglect the most persuasive argument of all, that Clodius was an immediate danger to Milo and a perennial danger to the state. No, I shall use the argument of an ambush—"

"Cicero, there was no ambush, by either side."

"Yes, but how do you know that, Gordianus?"

"Because I went there. I saw the place. I spoke to the witnesses."

"Ah, you went, you saw, you spoke - but the jurors will have done none of these things. It is up to me to shape their perceptions."

"But the jurors have already heard the witnesses."

"Yes, and that's unfortunate. These innovations of Pompey! The traditional sequence is for the advocates to make their arguments first, and shape the juror's opinions before they ever hear a witness. But never mind. Do you think the jurors will still be thinking about that whore of a priestess and her pathetic brother, or that incredibly common woman from the inn, after they've heard me plead Milo's case for three hours? I think not." He saw the look of consternation on my face and smiled. "You fail to understand, I see. You doubt that any speech could be so persuasive. But believe me, this is my best speech, by far the finest piece of oratory I've ever devised. You can't imagine the labour that's gone into it."

"The guile, you mean."

"Gordianus!" He shook his head,not in disgust - he was too ebullient for that-but in dismay. "Very well, then, guile. Composition, craft, guile, call it what you will! Where did you ever come by this naive, overweening reverence for the absolute and utter truth? This peculiar obsession — where has it ever got you? If simple truth alone could send armies into battle and sway jurors, if men could be made to respond as they should by telling them the truth, do you think I would use any other tool? It would all be so easy, then. But truth is not enough; often it's the very worst thing for a man with a cause! And so we have oratory. The beauty, the power of words! Thank the gods for the gift of oratory, and thank the gods for men who are clever enough, and wise enough, to bend the truth a bit every once in a while in order to keep the state free and in one piece. The important thing about tomorrow's hearing is not to determine who did what to whom on the Appian Way. The important thing, the absolutely vital thing, is that at the end of the day, Milo must go free. If the truth hinders that objective, then it must be dispensed with. It serves no purpose. Can't you see that, Gordianus? It's such an elementary matter."

I had heard enough. "And my captivity? Was that an elementary matter?"

Cicero's face went blank. "What do you mean?"

"While I was trapped in that stinking pit, someone wrote an anonymous note to my wife, telling her not to worry. I found another bit of writing - an old, old inscription in a scroll - that matched the handwriting of that note exactly. You wrote the note, Cicero. Do you deny it?"