Jack Ludlow - The Pillars of Rome

‘There is a difference between cackling rumour in the market-place and evidence sufficient to lay before a praetor.’

That last word made Gafon swallow hard; the mere mention of a magistrate was enough to remind him of how close he stood to being sold into debt bondage. Winter was no time for games and gladiator fights. If he did not come up with some money soon his creditors would take over his property and sell him off as a farm labourer to some distant rancher.

‘What is important is that the deed is undertaken unseen. If you are observed, and you are connected to me, I will pay the penalty for your misjudgement.’

The debt-ridden manager had a sudden fear that the commission was going to be withdrawn, which was not something that would go down well with the party of cut-throats he had gathered. If they found out that they had emerged from their slums for no reward they might just decide to take it out on him.

Lucius Falerius was considering abandoning the whole affair. He had a personal matter to settle as well as a political one, so a degree of self-examination was required to separate the two and ensure that one was not overshadowing the other. This idiot was right; if he and his band succeeded tonight, few would hesitate to lay the blame for what happened at his door. The idea that some of the drunken patrician youths who infested the streets and taverns, with too much money and too little sense, would murder a plebeian tribune was risible. Would it have been wiser to hang onto a few of his guests, so that they could swear he was home, grief stricken and wailing at the moment when Tiberius Livonius breathed his last?

No! Evidence from his friends would not be believed; if anything it would only serve to convince the rumour mill of the truth of their speculations. His best defence lay in avoiding such a contrivance and he would rather rely on his word alone. It had to be done; a formal break that would force men to decide which camp they adhered to. Some senators, either from a belief that the ideas of Tiberius Livonius would enhance their prospects, or even, in a very few cases, from misguided ideology, backed proposals that Lucius knew to be inimical to the safety of the Republic. Once let Livonius alter the balance of power in the Comita Tribalis, and it would be lost forever, turning what was an easily bypassed talking shop into a legislature to challenge the Senate.

His so-called Agrarian Law, limiting the amount of public land a citizen could hold, struck at the very heart of the faction Lucius represented. That was bad enough; the idea that the same land, sequestered to the state, should be divided up into small lots and gifted to the landless scum who filled the poorest quarters of Rome, was nothing less than a bribe to the mob. To Lucius that was a recipe for endless trouble, because the mob could never be satisfied; to give in to their demands once was to open the door to an endless run of fresh claims.

Worse was the plebeian tribune’s desire to extend Roman citizenship to the whole of Italy, which would permanently dilute patrician power by widening the franchise. This would strike at the wealth and political authority of the same class by allowing inter-marriage, as well as extending to such people the kind of trade concessions that buttressed senatorial wealth. With a keen sense of history, Lucius Falerius knew that empires were unstable constructs, with no gods-given right to continued existence. What was being proposed would weaken the Roman state, and once the spirit of the Goddess Discordia was let loose, there was no telling where matters would end. Tiberius Livonius had to be stopped, and the best way to kill off the body of such ideas was to chop off the head.

He cared nothing for himself in this; the power and majesty of Rome was everything to Lucius Falerius. He had given his every waking moment for a full thirty years to increasing that Imperium so would gladly give his last breath to maintain it. To his mind only the optimates could be entrusted with such a task; they were the men who had supervised the creation of the empire; they must combine to fight off the populares who, by appealing to the base greed of the lower orders, would drag Rome down, as other empires had been, by a fatal weakening of the structure of authority that had brought about success. Nothing counted against that single object, certainly not the life of one senator. Without doubt they would point to him, but who would believe that a man just delivered of a son, with his wife newly dead because of it, would choose that moment to murder his greatest political rival?

For the first time in two decades that Sibylline prophecy surfaced, and he recalled that night in the cave, as well as the terrors and reflections that had followed; Aulus so fearful, he determined to be rational. His childhood friend had certainly tamed his mighty foe; was this the moment he would strike to save Rome’s fame? Was there some truth in that Sibylline nonsense after all? The image of the eagle he had never forgotten, but surely it did not apply to a man like Livonius, unless the gods saw him as a bird of prey bringing down the Roman state. No! His enemy was no taloned eagle, more a twittering sparrow needing to be silenced.

‘Here,’ said Lucius, throwing Gafon a small leather bag full of coins. It was caught and weighed by a person well used to calculating the contents of a purse, a man who knew that what he had in his hand was either his whole agreed fee, or something very close to it. ‘We agreed half your fee in advance. You will already have ascertained that the purse contains more.’

‘Does it, your honour?’ Gafon’s eyes were wide, and larded with insincere surprise.

‘I have another task for you.’ That changed the innocent look to one of barely disguised suspicion. ‘It is nothing like as dangerous, but it is, to me, just as important. It therefore qualifies for a substantial reward.’

His hired assassin was thinking that if there was another fee, it was one of which his thugs would know nothing, therefore payment of whatever was required, if he agreed to it, would be for him alone.

‘I have a slave who has betrayed me,’ said Lucius, fingering a tightly rolled scroll of paper. ‘I could of course just kill him, I have the legal right to do so, but that would not send out the message that I require.’

‘He could die beside Livonius.’

Lucius shook his head. This Gafon was stupid, but he dealt with that every day, quite often with men who held high rank, so masking the thought came easily. ‘Nor would his body in the street point out what’s required, quite apart from his obvious association with me.’

Lucius waited for Gafon to draw the conclusion he sought to convey; that this household slave was in some way connected to the party of populares who supported Tiberius Livonius; that his death had to send a message to them as well as the rest of Rome’s slaves; that spying on their masters would result in only one fate; not just death but total oblivion.

‘You want him to disappear?’

‘Yes. How that is done I leave to you. I am about to call for him and give him some instructions relating to your task. He will readily understand that I distrust you, with the same arrogance that makes him think I have complete faith in him. I will ask him to accompany you, and watch to make sure that you carry out my instructions to the letter. How you do it and when I leave to you, but I want him disposed of, yet some sign of his demise to be publicly visible. Carry out that, as well, and your fee for the night’s work will be increased substantially.’

‘I accept,’ Gafon replied crisply.

‘You do not wish to ponder this?’ asked Lucius, with an arch, almost amused expression. The owner of the gladiator school, more concerned with his indebtedness than the prospect of another murder, shook his head. ‘The slave will have with him a scroll, and that too must disappear.’ Gafon nodded, then grinned as the senator continued. ‘He will also have some money of his own, which I expect you will relieve him of.’