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.'
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.'