"Yes, Gordianus. I insist."
I looked at the stunned faces of Davus and Diana. I felt as if a great stone was on my chest. "Great One, your kinsman is dead. That such a thing happened in my home fills me with shame. But as you yourself said, he's only the first. Thousands may die. What does one murder mean, when all the laws are suspended?"
"You ask questions, Finder. I want answers. Discover who murdered Numerius, and then we shall see about returning your son-in-law to you."
• • •
As the last of the sunlight retreated from the garden, so did Pompey's men, taking Davus with them and carrying the body of Numerius. Pompey left the device that had been used to strangle him with me, thinking it might be of some use in finding his killer. I could hardly stand to touch it.
Diana wept. Bethesda emerged from the house and gave me an accusing look. Mopsus and Androcles followed after her with my grandson between them, all holding hands. At the sight of the ugly giant Pompey had left to take Davus's place, little Aulus burst into tears, pulled free and toddled frantically back into the house.
IV
Cicero's house was only a short distance from my own, along the rim road of the Palatine Hill. Even on such a brief walk I would normally have taken Davus with me for protection, especially after dark. On this night, of all nights, I sorely missed him.
All around me I felt the uneasiness of the city, like a sleeper in the throes of a nightmare. The rustling of many footsteps rose up from the Forum in the valley below. Torches, like tiny fireflies at such a distance, darted to and fro across the open squares. What were so many people doing out after dark? They were lighting votives in the temples, I thought, praying for peace… making preparations for hasty departures… banging on their bankers' locked doors… buying up the last scraps of food and fuel in the market stalls. I rounded a corner, and the Capitoline Hill came into view. At its summit, great fires had been lit in the braziers before the Temple of Jupiter- watchfires to alert the people that an invading army was on the march.
Two guards were stationed outside Cicero's door. They appeared supremely unimpressed by the approach of a gray-haired visitor without even a bodyguard to accompany him.
My relations with Cicero were strained at best. I asked to see his private secretary, with whom I had always been on closer terms.
The younger of the guards scratched his head. "Tiro? Never heard of him. No, wait- isn't that the one who died while the Master was on his way home from Cilicia?"
The other guard, a fellow with a bristling beard, saw my alarm and laughed. "Pay no attention to this young idiot. He's been around only a few months, never even met Tiro, who isn't dead, just too sick to travel."
"I don't understand. Is Tiro here or isn't he?"
"He isn't."
"Where is he?"
The older guard looked thoughtful. "Now what is the name of that place? In Greece, close to the water…"
"What town in Greece isn't close to water?" I said.
"This one starts with a P…"
"Piraeus?"
"No…"
"Patrae?"
"That's it! I was with the Master during his stint as governor of Cilicia, you see, and so was Tiro, of course. Last summer, we all started back to Rome. Took a slow, easy route. Along about November, Tiro fell sick and had to stay behind with one of the Master's friends in Patrae. The Master pushed on, and we got back to Rome this month, just in time to celebrate his birthday."
"Cicero's birthday?"
"Three days before the Nones of Januarius. Fifty-seven- same age as Pompey, they say."
"What about Tiro?"
"He and the Master write each other back and forth, but it's always the same. Never seems to get much worse, but never gets much better, either. Still not well enough to travel."
"I see. I had no idea. This is bad news."
"For Tiro? I don't know about that. I figure he's in a good place about now. Lots of peace and quiet in Patrae, I should think. Nice place to convalesce. Wouldn't want to be in Rome these days if I didn't have two strong legs and felt up to running."
"I see your point."
"Was there somebody else in the household you wanted to see?"
"Want to see? No. Nonetheless, tell your master that Gordianus the Finder requests a visit."
• • •
Whatever recriminations had passed between us in former days seemed to have been forgotten by Cicero. I waited in the foyer for only a moment before he came to greet me. I received his embrace stiffly, startled by his warmth. I wondered if he had been drinking, but I smelled no wine on his breath. When he drew back I took a hard look at him.
I had braced myself to encounter Cicero in one of his less pleasant moods- the self-righteous, self-made man, smug friend of the powerful, peevish settler of old scores, priggish arbiter of virtue. I saw instead a man with jowls and receding hair and watery eyes, who looked as if he had just received the worst news of his life.
He gestured for me to follow him. The mood in his house matched the mood of the city- a panic barely contained by purposeful activity, as slaves hurried back and forth and spoke in hushed voices. Cicero led me first to his study, but the room was like a beehive, with slaves packing scrolls into boxes.
"This won't do," he said apologetically. "Come, there's a little room off the garden where we can talk quietly."
The little room was an exquisitely appointed chamber with a sumptuous Greek rug underfoot. A brazier on a tripod in the middle of the room illuminated walls painted with pastoral landscapes. Herdsmen dozed amid sheep, and satyrs peeked from behind little roadside temples.
"I've never seen this room before," I said.
"No? It was one of the first rooms Terentia decorated when we came back and rebuilt, after Clodius and his gang burned down the house and sent me into exile." He smiled ruefully. "Now Clodius is dust, but I'm still here- and so are you, Gordianus. But for what? To see it all come to this…"
Cicero paced nervously in a circle around the brazier, casting deep shadows across the walls. Abruptly he stopped his pacing and shot me a quizzical look. "Can it really have been thirty years since we first met, Gordianus?"
"Thirty-one, actually."
"The trial of Sextus Roscius." He shook his head. "We were all so young then! And brave, the way young men are, because they don't know any better. I, Marcus Tullius Cicero, took on the dictator Sulla in the courts- and bested him! I think back now and wonder how I could ever have been so mad. But it wasn't madness. It was bravery. I saw a terrible wrong and a way to redress it. I knew the danger and went ahead anyway, because I was young and thought I could change the world. Now… now I wonder if I can be that brave again. I fear I'm too old, Gordianus. I've seen too much… suffered too much…"
In my own recollections, Cicero's motives had never been quite as pure as he was painting them, colored as they were by shrewd ambition. Was he brave? Certainly he had taken risks- and been rewarded with fame, honor, and wealth. True, Fortune had not always smiled on him; he had suffered defeats and humiliations, especially in recent years. But he had caused others to suffer much worse. Men had been put to death without trial when he was consul, in the name of preserving the state.
Could any man advance as far in politics as Cicero had, and keep his hands entirely clean? Perhaps not. What rankled me was his insistence in presenting himself as the untarnished champion of virtue and reason. It was not a pose; it was the picture he had of himself. His unflagging self-justification had often exasperated, even infuriated, me. But now, in the darkness that had fallen on Rome, with the choice narrowed between one military leader and another, Cicero began to seem like not such a bad fellow after all.
He shook his head. "Can you believe it? That it's happening again? That we must go through the same madness all over again? Our lives began with civil war, and now they shall end with it. A generation passes, and people forget. But do they really not remember how it was, in the war between Sulla and his enemies? Rome itself besieged and taken! And the horrors that followed, when Sulla set himself up as dictator! You remember, Gordianus. You were here. You saw the gaping heads mounted on bloody pikes in the Forum- decent, respectable men, hunted down and murdered by bounty hunters, their property seized and auctioned off to Sulla's favorites, their families impoverished and disgraced. Sulla got rid of his enemies- cleansing the state, he called it- made a few reforms, then stepped down and put the Senate back in charge. From that day until this, I have spent every hour of every day doing everything I could to fend off another such catastrophe. And yet- here we are. The Republic is about to come crashing down around us. Was this inevitable? Was there no way this could have been avoided?"