I stopped and stared at the approaching group of men. They looked like serious travellers on serious business, sober-faced and dusty from, hard riding. Some were obviously bodyguards. Others…
'By Jupiter, Eco! Can it be?'
Eco nodded and raised his hand in a gesture of greeting. After a final moment of disbelief, I did the same. Even, so, the, riders hardly glanced at us. No doubt they took us for a pair of bearded derelicts. It was Tiro who gave a start, muttered an exclamation of surprise and reached for his old master's sleeve. The entourage came to a halt.
'By all the gods!' Cicero leaned forwards and peered at me as if I were some freakish curiosity being shown off in the arena. 'Can it be Gordianus, beneath all that hair and filth? And Eco?'
'You're alive! Both of you, alive!' Tiro's voice caught in his throat. He leaped from his mount and rushed to embrace us both, weeping with joy.
Cicero managed to restrain any such feelings and remained on his horse. He caught our scent and made a face. He stared at me and slowly shook his head. 'Gordianus, you look frightful! What on earth have you been up to?'
'Your disappearance has been much talked about in Rome,' said Cicero that night, as we dined in a private room at an inn outside the town of Ariminum.
'I'm surprised anyone noticed I was gone.'
'Oh, quite the contrary. You're better known than you might think. There's been no end of speculation. Even vendors in the fish markets talk about the inexplicable disappearance of the Finder and his son; so my slaves tell me, anyway.-Of course, Rome has been full of all sorts of strange happenings and curious rumours in the last month. Your vanishing was just one more.'
'But my family is well?' I had already asked this question more than once.
Tiro patiently reassured me. 'Quite well. Just before we left Rome, I paid a visit to see if there was any news of you. They were all in good health — your wife and daughter, your son's wife and children. They were quite worried about the two of you, of course…'
Eco shook his head. 'We should be hurrying back to Rome right now, Papa, instead of sitting here stuffing our faces!'
'Nonsense,' said Cicero. He gestured to a slave to refill my cup of watered wine and bring more food. 'I think you have no idea just how wretched you both looked when I came upon you this afternoon. Fortunately, the town of Arirninum has good baths, so we were able to get you decently washed and barbered. And this inn has decent food, so hopefully we can begin to fatten you up a bit, as well. You've almost begun to look like human beings again. As for the idea that you should go riding breakneck back to Rome, I advise against it. You need rest and recuperation, good food, country air and sunshine, and above all the safety of travelling in an armed company. Oh no, I insist that you stay with me, at least until we reach Ravenna tomorrow.'
Cicero had explained that he was on a journey to see Julius Caesar at the' commander's winter headquarters in Ravenna. I had not yet discovered why. He and Tiro had left Rome four days previously — a bit of information which Eco had seized upon with a good deal of gloating, citing it as proof that his memory of a four-day journey at the beginning of our captivity was accurate. Indeed, his reckoning of the days and my calculation of the date proved to be exactly right: it was six days before the Ides of March, seventy-two days since the death of Publius Clodius. We had been held prisoners for forty-four days somewhere in the vicinity of Ariminum, where the northernmost spur of the Flaminian Way ends and the newer Popillian Way continues northward towards Ravenna.
'What else are they talking about in Rome?' I said. 'The vendors in the fish markets, I mean. I take that as a good sign, that the markets are open.'
'Yes, things have calmed down considerably in Rome since your… misfortune. The Senate authorized Pompey to raise troops to maintain order, and they've done a reasonably good job. There have been some clashes between soldiers and civilians, and a few minor incidents of arson, but for the most part order has been restored.'
'And elections?'
Cicero winced. Dyspepsia, or politics? 'The question of elections became increasingly… problematic. Untenable, ultimately. Canyou imagine, thirteen interrexes since Lepidus, and no elections? That's over now. Only a few days before Tiro and I left Rome, the Senate voted to make Pompey sole consul for the rest of the year.' His voice trailed away to a dry whisper. He coughed and reached for his cup of wine. The cancellation of the consular elections had to signify a great personal and political defeat for him. What would become of his champion Milo now? Would the electoral process ever return to normal?
Cicero cleared his throat and went on. 'There has been a great deal of wrangling and manoeuvring in the Senate, as you can imagine.' He made this comment without his usual relish. Cicero had made much of my wretched appearance, but I began to see that he looked rather tired and drawn himself. 'First the Clodians tried to force Milo to hand over his slaves for questioning. Milo forestalled them there, eh, Tiro? He made the slaves in question freedmen ahead of time so that even the Senate couldn't round them up and torture them for evidence. We countered with a demand that Fulvia deliver Clodius's slaves for a bit of torture and interrogation. She and her family didn't care very much for that idea.' Cicero smiled wanly at this minor triumph. 'Since Pompey became consul, the Clodians have been trying to force a special inquest into Clodius's death. A show trial with Milo being crucified like a slave is what they'd like, something overblown and dramatic. Then they'll claim that Milo's offence was so spectacular that the Senate had to pass a special law just to deal with it. They proposed such an inquest, and we countered by attaching additional legislation which specifically condemned the burning of the Senate House and the attack on the house of the interrex Lepidus. That way, all three incidents would have been condemned equally in the eyes of the law, and all the malefactors would have been liable for equal penalties. Oh, the Clodians don't like the sound of that! No, no, no! They expect someone to be destroyed for the death of their precious leader, but they think they can burn down half the Forum and not pay for the crime! Well, we shall see, we shall see…' Cicero threw back his head and narrowed his eyes. It occurred to me that he had had too much to drink. I had never, ever before seen Cicero inebriated.
He wrinkled his nose. 'Meanwhile, Pompey has his own ideas of how to straighten things out. He's come up with a package of new laws; these will speed up the courts and put down sedition, he says. Pompey's idea of law and order is to make it easier to convict a man and to inflict harsher penalties on him, never mind whether he's guilty or not! Some of his so-called reforms are positively ludicrous. Shorter trials, he says; that's the answer. We can't afford the luxury of letting an orator take the time he needs to build an irrefutable argument. No more of this nonsense of the prosecution and defence each taking a whole day to deliver their speeches! Instead, the prosecution will be allowed two hours, and the defence will be allowed three hours. I suppose if an advocate is in the middle of a speech when the time runs out, they'll clamp his jaw shut. And witnesses! Witnesses will come first, not last, before the speeches instead of after. That makes the witnesses the main focus of the trial, and the speeches a mere addendum! Pompey's never been much of an orator himself. He distrusts oratory, so he wants to demote it, dismiss it. But to give such prominence to witnesses is pure folly — anyone with sense knows that most witnesses are deluded, or unreliable, or bribed. And no character witnesses! Pompey has forbidden character witnesses. Never mind that a man can arrange for half the Senate to speak up for his good character, such testimony is now irrelevant. Juries will now be drawn from a list of eligible names hand-picked by Pompey himself Hand-picked by a single man, not even by two, because we have only one consul, and that one not even elected by the citizens!'
Tiro laid a restraining hand on his old master's elbow, but Cicero shook it off. 'I know what I'm saying. And I'm not drunk. I'm just tired, very tired. Travelling disagrees with me. Besides, Gordianus appreciates candour. Don't you, Gordianus? Ah, but I forget, you're one of Pompey's men now, aren't you?'
'What do you mean?'
'One could hardly help but notice all those guards keeping watch at your house for the last month. They do come from Pompey, don't they?'
'Perhaps,' I said, uneasy at Cicero's scrutiny but for the most part glad to learn that Pompey had kept his word. 'It doesn't mean I'm Pompey's man.'
Cicero stared into his cup and blinked. 'Gordianus, I have never pretended to understand your desultory allegiances. For all I know, you're spying on Pompey and not for him, and somehow managed to talk him into guarding your family while you do it.'
'You were talking about Pompey's reforms,' I said, wanting to change the subject.
Cicero laughed aloud. How much wine had he drunk? 'So I was. You know, my very favourite is the Great
