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.