“Don’t play the virtuous servant of the people with me, Metellus!” Scaurus snapped, dropping the jovial act. “You need what I have to offer! I know what your office is costing you! I will cover all your debts if you will simply cooperate with me. Many of your friends are not too proud to ask the same favor from Pompey or Crassus or Caesar.”
“That isn’t what I want, Scaurus,” I said.
“Then what do you want?” he cried, honestly exasperated and mystified.
“I want your head mounted on a pole on the rostra next to the head of Valerius Messala Niger. The rest of your gang can be hanged or crucified or given to the bulls and bears for all I care, but a pair of patricians like you and Messala deserve to have your heads exposed in the Forum for the public to ridicule.” For a man of his family, such a fate was infinitely worse than any manner of death, no matter how painful.
“For what?” he asked. “For violating some antiquated laws? For violating some building codes? Half the Senate does worse by far!”
“Half the Senate aren’t involved in putting up insulae that collapse and kill hundreds of people at once.”
“I was not responsible for the collapse of the house of Folius!” he said. “The filthy rogue may have cut some corners in building it, but he intended to live in it, you idiot! Do you think he’d build a house just so that it would fall down on his head?”
As near as I could read him, he meant it. “Even if that’s true, there have been a dozen others in the last three or four years, with more than two thousand dead. I’ll tie your name to every one of them and prove Messala’s connivance as well.”
“Well, then,” he said, recovering his equanimity, “that’s something for a jury to decide, isn’t it? I’ve had juries find in my favor before; it isn’t difficult.”
The building gave another groan and lurch. “You’re forgetting the murder of Lucilius.”
He shrugged. “Senators are murdered all the time. These are rough days, Metellus, you know that. The man was knifed in a whorehouse. He didn’t even die brawling with his enemies in the Forum. Anyone who could testify about his death is dead now, anyway.”
“You admit you knew about the big slave and the girl, Galatea?”
He shook his head, chuckling. “Metellus, you know perfectly well that I am admitting nothing at all. I know that the swine and his sow died in the collapse of their house. I sold the brute to Folius three or four years ago. The bitch wanted a bodyguard and Antaeus was a wrestler from one of my estates in Bruttium. I think the girl was from their town house in Bovillae. About a month ago the wrestler came to me and begged me to buy him and the girl. I had no use for him so I sent him away, and that is the last I saw of him. So you see, whatever happened was the doing of Lucius Folius.”
I was beginning to see what had happened in that insula. It was a bit of a disappointment, but I still had plenty of evidence against Scaurus.
“No matter. You and Messala can try to throw all the guilt on Folius, who was nothing more than a middleman for the two of you; but everyone will know the truth whatever verdict the jury returns. At the very least, you’ll be expelled from the Senate, stripped of your patrician status, all your wealth forfeit to the treasury, and, best of all, every poor man in Rome will be longing to kill you on sight. Even if you run, you’ll end your days in poverty in some wretched barbarian town wishing you’d died when you had the chance.”
He sighed. “You are quite sure that we can’t come to an agreement then?”
“Forget it,” I said, turning. “Best to be out of here anyway. I don’t want to die in another of your death-trap buildings.”
“I am afraid that will be unavoidable,” he said. At that, the men who had been waiting on the balcony above us came scrambling down the steps, knives in their hands.
Well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been expecting it. We stood between two of the stairways and they had us neatly boxed in, two men to each stair. I already had my dagger in one fist and my caestus on the other, and I’d decided to kill Scaurus before dealing with the others. I’d shown him all the forbearance I was going to that day.
He hadn’t been expecting me to move so quickly, and he let out a squawk, jumping back as I lunged, moving very fast for a bulky man. I would have had him then, but the building gave a sickening lurch and I stumbled sideways, only scoring a long scratch on his chest and shoulder. He twisted away and ran past the two men behind him. They had to pause to let him by, and this gave me a moment to recover my guard.