John Maddox Roberts - [SPQR Roman Mysteries 8.6]-Mightier Than The Sword (2 page)

"I should think
not. What you need to do something about is the unchecked and
unpunished violence in the City. It strikes me as ludicrous that our
Senatorial authorities can pacify whole provinces but are helpless to
make Rome a safe city." He looked as if a new thought had occurred to
him. "Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger? A friend of Milo's are you
not?" It wasn't the first time that association had been held against
me.

"Yes, but, like
your father's political connections, it has no bearing here. If Milo
should prove to be responsible, I shall hale him before the
Praetor
like any other malefactor."

"Rome needs a
genuine police force!" he said, heatedly. "And laws with teeth!"

I was getting
tired of this. "When did you last see your father?"

"Yesterday
morning. He spoke to me in the Forum. He had been out of the City,
touring his country estates—" I saw that look of satisfaction cross his
face. They were
his
estates now. "—but he came
back to inspect one of his town properties. This one, I think."

"He certainly
seems to have ended up here. What plans did he have for this building?"

He shrugged
again. "The usual, I suppose: Let out the ground floor to some
well-to-do tenant and the upper floors to the less affluent. He owned
many such properties." He smoothed a fold of his exceptionally white
toga. "Will there be anything else?"

"Not at present.
But I may wish to speak with you again."

"Anything for one
on the service of the Senate and People of Rome," he said, none too
warmly.

With the crowd
gone, I went back to my inspection duties, giving them less than half
of my attention. Much as I disliked the man's attitude, Quintus
Cosconius had spoken nothing but the truth when he said that Rome
needed a police force. Our ancient laws forbade the presence of armed
soldiers within the sacred walls, and that extended to any citizen
bearing arms in the City. From time to time someone would suggest
forming a force of slave-police, on the old Athenian model, but that
meant setting slaves in power over citizens, and that was unthinkable.

The trouble was
that any force of armed men in the City would quickly become a private
army for one of the political criminals who plagued the body politic in
those days. In earlier times we had done well enough without police,
because Romans were a mostly law-abiding people with a high respect for
authority and civic order. Ever since the Gracchi, though, mob action
had become the rule in Rome, and every aspiring politician curried
favor with a criminal gang, to do his dirty work in return for
protection in the courts. 

The Republic was
very sick and, despite my fondest hopes, there was to be no cure.

"You've been
drinking," Julia said when I got home.

"It's been that
sort of day." I told her about the dead Senator while we had dinner in
the courtyard.

"You have no
business investigating while you're in another office," she said.
"Varus should appoint a
Iudex."

"It may be years
before a Court for Assassins is appointed to look into this year's
murders. They're happening by the job lot. But this one occurred on my
territory."

"You just like to
snoop. And you're hoping to get something on Clodius."

"What will one
more murder laid at his doorstep mean? No, for once, I doubt that
Clodius had anything to do with it." Luckily for me, my Julia was a
favourite niece of the great Caius Julius Caesar, darling of the
Popular Assemblies. Clodius was Caesar's man and dared not move against
me openly, and by this time he considered himself the veritable
uncrowned king of Rome, dispensing largesse and commanding his troops
in royal fashion. As such, sneaky, covert assassination was supposedly
beneath his dignity. Supposedly.

At that time,
there were two sorts of men contending for power: The Big Three were
all that were left of the lot that had been trying to gain control of
the whole Empire for decades. Then there were men like Clodius and
Milo, who just wanted to rule the City itself. Since the great
conquerors had to be away from the City for years at a time, all of
them had men to look after their interests in Rome. Clodius represented
Caesar. Milo had acted for Crassus, although he was also closely tied
in with Cicero and the star of Crassus was rapidly fading, to wink out
that summer, did we but know it at the time. Plautius Hypsaeus was with
the Pompeian faction, and so it went.

"Tell me about
it," Julia said, separating an orange into sections. She always
believed her woman's intuition could greatly improve upon the
performance of my plodding reasoning. Sometimes she was right, although
I carefully refrained from telling her so.

"So you think a
prostitute killed him?" she said when she had heard me out.

"I only said that
was in keeping with the weapon. I have never known a man to use such a
tool to rid himself of an enemy."

"Oh, yes. Men
like sharp edges and lots of blood."

"Exactly. This
little skewer bespeaks a finesse I am reluctant to credit to our
forthright cutthroats."

"But if the man
owned property all over the City, why take his hired companion to the
cellar of an unfurnished house?"

"Good question,"
I allowed. "Of course, in such matters, some men have truly recondite
tastes. Why, your own Uncle Caius Julius has been known to enjoy…"

"Spare me," she
said, very clearly, considering that her teeth were clamped tightly
together.

With my fellow
Aediles
I shared the warren of office space beneath the ancient Temple of
Ceres. A man was waiting for me when I climbed the steps.
"Aedile
Metellus?" He was a short, bald man and he wore a worried look that
furrowed his brow all the way back to the middle of his scalp. "I am
Manius Varro, the builder."

"Ah, yes. You
recently completed a townhouse property for Aulus Cosconius?"

"I did," he said,
still worried. "And I used only the best…"

"You will be
happy to learn that I found no violations of the code concerning
materials or construction."

Relief washed
over his face like a wave on a beach. "Oh. It's just about the body,
then?" He shook his head ruefully, trying to look concerned. "Poor
Aulus Cosconius. I'd done a fair amount of business for him over the
years."

"Was there any
dispute over your payment?"

He looked
surprised that I should ask. "No. He paid in full for that job months
ago. He'd been planning to put up a big tenement in the Subura, but he
cancelled that a few days ago."

"Did he say why?"

"No, just that he
didn't want to start anything big with uncertain times ahead. I thought
he meant we might have a Dictator next year. You never can tell what
that might mean."

"Very true," I
said, my gaze wandering out over one of Rome's most spectacular views,
the eye-stunning expanse of the Circus Maximus stretching out below us.
To a native son of Rome, that view is immensely satisfying because it
combines three of our passions: races, gambling and enormous, vulgar
buildings. His gaze followed mine.

"Ah,
Aedile,
I take it you'll be organizing the races next month?"

"To the great
distress of my purse, yes."

"Do you know
who's driving in the first race?"

"Victor for the
Reds, Androcles for the Greens, Philip for the Blues and Paris for the
Whites." I could have reeled off the names of all sixteen horses they
would be driving as well. I was good at that sort of thing.

"You Caecilians
are Reds, aren't you?"

"Since Romulus,"
I told him, knowing what was coming.

"I support the
Blues. Fifty sesterces on Philip in the first race, even money?" He
undoubtedly knew the names of all the horses as well.

"The Sparrow has
a sore forefoot," I said, naming the Red's near-side trace horse. "Give
me three to two."

"Done!" he
grinned. We took out the little tablets half the men in Rome carry
around to record bets. With our styli we scratched our names and bets
in each other's tablets. He walked away whistling and I felt better,
too. Victor had assured me personally that the Sparrow's foot would be
fine in plenty of time for the race. I flicked the accumulation of wax
from the tip of my stylus, my mind going back to the condition of
Cosconius's body.

I had dismissed
Varro as a suspect in the murder. Building contractors as a class are
swindlers rather than murderers and his manner was all wrong. But our
little bet had set me on a promising mental trail. My borrowed lictor
was sitting on the base of the statue of Proserpina that stood in front
of the temple before the restorations commissioned by Maecaenas. He
looked bored senseless. I summoned him.

"Let's go to the
Forum." At that he brightened. Everything really interesting was
happening in the Forum. In the Forum, lictors were respected as symbols
of
imperium.
With him preceding me, we went down
the hill and across the old Cattle Market and along the Tuscan Street
to the Forum.

The place was
thronged, as usual. It held an aura of barely-contained menace in that
unruly year, but people still respected the symbol of the
fasces
and made way for the lictor. I made a slow circuit of the area, finding
out who was there and, more importantly, who was not. To my great
relief, neither Clodius nor Milo were around with their crowds of
thugs. Among the candidates for the next year's offices I saw the young
Quintus Cosconius. Unlike the others standing for the tribuneship in
their specially whitened togas he wore a dingy, brown toga and he had
not shaved his face nor combed his hair, all in token of mourning.

On the steps of
the Basilica Opimia I found Cicero, surrounded as always by clients and
friends. Ordinarily I would have waited upon his notice like everyone
else, but my office and my lictor allowed me to approach him at once.

"Good morning,
Aedile,"
he saluted, always punctilious in matters of office. He raised an
eyebrow at sight of my lictor. "Does your office now carry
imperium?
I must have dozed off during the last Senate meeting."

"Good morning,
Marcus Tullius, and no, I'm just carrying out an investigation for
Varus. I would greatly appreciate your advice."

"Of course." We
made that little half-turn that proclaimed that we were now in private
conference and the others directed their attention elsewhere. "Is it
the murder of Aulus Cosconius? Shocking business."

"Exactly. What
were the man's political leanings, if any?"

"He was a
dreadfully old-fashioned man, the sort who oppose almost anything
unsanctioned by our remote ancestors. Like most of the men involved in
City property trade, he supported Crassus. Before he left for Syria,
Crassus told them all to fight Pompey's efforts to become Dictator.
That's good advice, even coming from Crassus. I've spent months trying
to convince the tribunes not to introduce legislation to that effect."

"What about next
year's tribunes?" I asked.

"Next year's? I'm
having trouble enough with the ones we have now."

"Even if Pompey
isn't named Dictator, he's almost sure to be one of next year's
Consuls. If the Tribunes for next year are all Pompey's men, he'll have
near-dictatorial authority and the proconsular province of his
choosing. He'll be able to take Syria from Crassus, or Gaul from
Caesar, if he wants."

Cicero nodded.
"That has always been Pompey's style —let someone else do all the
fighting, then get the Tribunes to give him command in time for the
kill." Now he looked sharply at me. "What are you getting at, Decius?"

"Be patient with
me, Marcus Tullius. I have…" at that moment I saw a slave, one of
Asklepiodes's silent Egyptian assistants, making his way toward me,
holding a folded piece of papyrus, which he handed to me. I opened up
the papyrus, read the single word it held, and grinned. "Marcus
Tullius," I said, "if a man were standing for public office and were
caught in some offense against the ancient laws—say, he carried arms
within the boundaries set by Romulus —would it abnegate his
candidacy?" My own solution to the law was to carry a
caestus.
The spiked boxing glove was, technically, sports equipment rather than
a proper weapon.

"It's a commonly
violated custom in these evil times, but if I were standing for office
against that man I would prosecute him and tie him up in litigation so
thoroughly that he would never take office."

"That is just
what I needed to know. Marcus Tullius, if I might impose upon you
further, could you meet with me this afternoon at the
ludus
of Statilius Taurus?"

Now he was
thoroughly mystified, something I seldom managed to do to Cicero.
"Well, my friend Balbus has been writing me from Africa for months to
help him arrange the Games he will be giving when he returns. I could
take care of that at the same time."

"Thank you,
Marcus Tullius." I started to turn away.

"And, Decius?"

I turned back.
"Yes?"

"Do be
entertaining. That's a long walk."

"I promise it."

At the bottom of
the steps I took the tablet thonged to the slave's belt and wrote on
the wax with my stylus. "Take this to your master," I instructed. He
nodded wordlessly and left. Asklepiodes's slaves could speak, but only
in Egyptian, which in Rome was the same thing as being mute. Then I
gave the lictor his orders.

"Go to Quintus
Cosconius, the man in mourning dress over there with the candidates,
and tell him that he is summoned to confer with me at the Statilian
School in" —I glanced up at the angle of the sun —"three hours."

He ran off and I
climbed the lower slope of the Capitoline along the Via Sacra to the
Archive. I spoke with Calpurnius, the freedman in charge of estate
titles, and he brought me a great stack of tablets and scrolls, bulky
with thick waxen seals, recording the deeds of the late Aulus
Cosconius. The one for the Aventine town house where I had discovered
his body was a nice little wooden diptych with bronze hinges. Inside,
one leaf bore writing done with a reed pen in black ink. The other had
a circular recess that held the wax seal protecting it from damage.