Roman blood

'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.'

'Oh, in the name of Jupiter, stop, Cicero!' Rufus had finally reached his limit. I closed my eyes and rendered a prayer of thanks to the unseen gods that it was Rufus who had finally spoken and not me, for I had been biting my tongue so hard it nearly bled. 'Can't you see this is useless? Whatever crime Tiro has committed, it's known only to those of us in this room, and to no one else who cares, at least so long as the girl keeps her mouth shut. It's a matter to be handled between you and your slave. Sleep on it and put it out of your mind until after the trial, and meanwhile simply see that he's kept away from the girl. As Gordianus says, save your voice and your anger for more important matters, such as saving Sextus Roscius. What matters now is discovering what Tiro told her and how the information got to our enemies.'

'And why the girl would betray her own father.' I looked wearily at Tiro. 'Perhaps you have some idea about that.'

Tiro looked meekly at Cicero, as if to see whether he had permission to speak or even breathe. For a moment Cicero seemed on the verge of another outburst. Instead he only cursed and turned towards the dimly glowing atrium, tightly hugging himself as if to contain his fury.

'Well, Tiro?'

'It still seems impossible,' he said softly, shaking his head. 'Perhaps I'm mistaken. It's only, when you said it had to be someone in this room who betrayed you, I thought to myself, not me, I've told no one, and then I realized I had told Roscia…'

'Just as you told her all about me on the day I first interviewed Sextus Roscius,' I said.

'Yes.'

'And the very next day Mallius Glaucia and another of Magnus's thugs came to my house to frighten me off the case, killing my cat and leaving their message in its blood. Yes, it seems to me quite likely that your Roscia is the leak in our vessel.'

'But how? She loves her father. She would do anything to help him.'

'This is what she tells you?'

'Yes. That was why she was always pressing me with questions about the investigation, asking what Cicero was doing to help her father. Sextus Roscius always made her leave the room when he talked business and wouldn't tell her or her mother anything. She couldn't stand not knowing.'

'And so, in between, or during, or after your hurried little trysts, she plied you with detailed questions about her father's defence.'

'Yes. But you make it sound so sinister, so awkward and artificial.'

'Oh, no, I'm sure she's as smooth as burnished gold.'

'You make her sound like an actor.' He lowered his voice and glanced towards Cicero, who had turned his back and stepped into the atrium. 'Or like a whore.'

I laughed. 'Not like a whore, Tiro. You should know better than that.' I saw him blush and look again towards Cicero, as if he expected me to mention Electra now and destroy him even further in his master's eyes. 'No,' I said, 'the motivations of a whore are always transparent, comprehensible precisely because they are suspect, bewitching only to a genuine fool, or to a man who devoutly wishes to be fooled.' I rose from my chair, walked stiffly across the room, and laid my hand on his shoulder. 'But even the wise may be taken in by that which seems young and innocent and fair. Especially if they are young and innocent themselves.'

Tiro glanced towards the atrium, where Cicero had stepped out of earshot. 'Do you really think that's all she wanted from me, Gordianus? Just a way to find out what I knew?'

I thought of what I had seen that first day at Caecilia's, of the look on the girl's face and the yearning arch of her naked body against the wall. I thought of the Htde leer that had flashed in the eyes of young Lucius Megarus at the memory of her stay in his father's house in Ameria. 'No, not entirely. If you mean, did she feel nothing at all when she was with you, I doubt that very much. Trust is seldom entirely pure, and neither is deceit.'

'If she was collecting information,' Rufus said, 'perhaps she was passing it on in some innocent way herself. There might be a slave in the household she confides in, some spy placed there by Chrysogonus who plies her with questions the same way she plies Tiro.'

I shook my head. 'I don't think so. Tell me if I'm right, Tiro. So far you've only managed to see her whenever you could accompany one of us on an errand to Caecilia's house, correct?'

'Yes….' He drew out the word tenuously, as if he anticipated the next question.

'But something tells me that Roscia made some proposal to meet you — tomorrow?'

'Yes.'

'But how did you know that?' asked Rufus.

'Because the trial draws very near. Whoever is gathering their information from Roscia would press her for more regular reports as the final day approaches. They can't rely on the haphazard chance of Tiro being able to see her every day. They would press her to plan for a tryst. True, Tiro?'

'Yes.'

'And tomorrow is here already,' I said, looking into the garden where Cicero was still composing himself. The light had changed from rose to ochre and was rapidly fading to white. Already the coolness of the night was receding. ‘When and where, Tiro?'

He looked towards his master, who still gave no sign of hearing, then let out a deep sigh. 'On the Palatine. Near Caecilia Metella's house there's a patch of ground with trees and grass, an open park between two houses; I'm to meet her there at three hours after noon. I told her it might be impossible. She said that if I was with you or with Rufus I should tell you that I had an urgent errand to run for Cicero, or vice versa. She said she was sure I could think of something.'