Robert Harris - Lustrum

'You must have lost many friends and comrades at the hands of the barbarians.'

'I did. A great many.'

After a long pause, during which there was complete silence in the court, Cicero turned to the jury. 'The fortunes of war, gentlemen,' he said, 'can be cruel and capricious. But that is not the same as treason.'

As he resumed his seat there was prolonged applause, not only from the crowd but among the jury, and for the first time I dared to hope that Cicero's skill as an advocate might once again have saved the day. Rufus smiled to himself and took a sip of wine and water before getting to his feet. He had an athlete's way of loosening his shoulders by linking his hands behind his head and rotating his upper torso from side to side. Watching him do it then, just before he started his cross-examination, the years seemed to fall away, and suddenly I remembered how Cicero used to send him running errands across the city and tease him for the looseness of his clothes and the length of his hair. And I recalled how the boy would steal money from me and stay out all night drinking and gambling, and yet how hard it was to feel angry with him for long. What pattern of ambition's twisting paths had brought us each to this place?

Rufus sauntered over to the witness stand. He was entirely without nerves. He might have been meeting a friend at a tavern. 'Do you have a good memory, Antonius Hybrida?'

'I do.'

'Well then, I expect you remember a slave of yours who was murdered on the eve of your consulship.'

A look of great mystification passed across Hybrida's face and he glanced across in puzzlement towards Cicero. 'I'm not sure that I do. One's had so many slaves over the years…'

'But you must remember this slave?' persisted Rufus. 'A Smyrnan? Twelve years old or thereabouts? His body was dumped in the Tiber. Cicero was there when his remains were discovered. His throat had been cut and his intestines removed.'

There was a gasp of horror around the court, and I felt my mouth go dry, not only at the memory of that poor lad, but at the realisation of where this chain of questioning might lead. Cicero saw it too. He jumped up in alarm and appealed to the praetor, 'This is irrelevant, surely? The death of a slave more than four years ago can have nothing to do with a lost battle on the shores of the Black Sea.'

'Let the prosecutor ask his question,' ruled Clodianus, and then added philosophically: 'I have found in life that all sorts of things are often linked.'

Hybrida was still looking hopelessly at Cicero. 'I believe perhaps I do remember something of the sort.'

'I should hope so,' responded Rufus. 'It's not every day that a human sacrifice is performed in one's presence! Even for you, I would have thought, with all your abominations, that must have been a rarity.'

'I know nothing about any human sacrifice,' muttered Hybrida.

'Catilina did the killing, and then required you and others present to swear an oath.'

'Did he?' Hybrida screwed up his face as if he were trying to remember some long-forgotten acquaintance. 'No, I don't think so. No, you are mistaken.'

'Yes he did. You swore an oath on the blood of that slaughtered child to murder your own colleague as consul – the man who now sits beside you as your advocate!'

These words produced a fresh sensation, and when the cries had died away, Cicero got up. 'Really, this is a pity,' he said, with a regretful shake of his head, 'a great pity, because my young friend was not doing a bad job as prosecutor up to this moment – he was my pupil once, gentlemen, so actually I flatter myself as well as him by conceding it. Unfortunately now he has gone and ruined his own case with an insane allegation. I fear I shall have to take him back to the classroom.'

'I know it is true, Cicero,' retorted Rufus, smiling even more broadly, 'because you told me about it yourself.'

For the barest flicker of an instant, Cicero hesitated, and I saw to my horror that he had forgotten his conversation with Rufus all those years ago. 'You ungrateful wretch,' he spluttered. 'I did no such thing.'

'In the first week of your consulship,' said Rufus, 'two days after the Latin Festival you called me to your house and asked if Catilina had ever talked in my presence of killing you. You told me that Hybrida had confessed to swearing an oath with Catilina on a murdered boy to do precisely that. You asked me to keep my ears open.'

'That is a complete lie!' shouted Cicero, but his bluster did little to dispel the effect of Rufus's cool and precise recollection.

'This is the man you took into your confidence as consul,' continued Rufus, with deadly calmness, pointing at Hybrida. 'This is the man you foisted on the people of Macedonia as their governor – a man you knew to have taken part in a bestial murder, and who had desired your own death. And yet this is the man you defend today. Why?'

'I don't have to answer your questions, boy.'

Rufus strolled over to the jury. 'That is the question, gentlemen: why does Cicero, of all men, who made his reputation attacking corrupt provincial governors, now destroy his good name by defending this one?'

Once again Cicero stretched out a hand to the praetor. 'Clodianus, I am asking you, for heaven's sake, to control your court. This is supposed to be a cross-examination of my client, not a speech about me.'

'That is true, Rufus,' said the praetor. 'Your questions must relate to the case in hand.'

'But they do. My case is that Cicero and Hybrida came to an agreement.'

Cicero said, 'There is no proof of that.'

'Yes there is,' retorted Rufus. 'Less than a year after you dispatched Hybrida to the long-suffering people of Macedonia, you bought yourself a new house – there!' He gestured to it, gleaming on the Palatine in the spring sunshine, and the jurymen all turned their heads to look. 'One much like it sold soon afterwards for fourteen million sesterces. Fourteen million! Ask yourselves, gentlemen: where did Cicero, who prided himself on his humble origins, acquire such a fortune, if not from the man he both blackmailed and protected, Antonius Hybrida? Is that not the truth,' he demanded, turning back to the accused, 'that you diverted part of the money you extorted from your province to your partner in crime in Rome?'

'No, no,' protested Hybrida. 'I may have sent Cicero a gift or two from time to time, but that is all.' (This was the explanation they had agreed on the previous evening, in case Rufus had evidence of money passing between them.)

' A gift? ' repeated Rufus. With exaggerated slowness he looked once more at Cicero's house, raising his hand to protect his eyes from the sun. A woman with a parasol was strolling along the terrace, and I realised it must be Terentia. 'That is quite a gift!'

Cicero sat very still. He watched Rufus closely. Several members of the jury were shaking their heads. From the audience in the comitium came the sound of jeering.

'Gentlemen,' said Rufus, 'I believe I have made my case. I have shown how Hybrida lost a whole region from our empire by his treasonable negligence. I have proved his cowardice and incompetence. I have revealed how money that should have gone to the army went instead into his own coffers. The ghosts of his legionaries, abandoned by their chief and cruelly murdered by the barbarians, cry out to us for justice. This monster should never have been permitted to hold such a high position, and would not have done so without the collusion of his consular colleague. His career is soaked in blood and depravity – the murder of that child is but a small part of it. It is too late to bring the dead back to life, but let us at least remove this man and his stench from Rome. Let us send him into exile tonight.'

Rufus sat down to prolonged applause. The praetor looked somewhat surprised, and asked if that was the conclusion of the prosecution's case. Rufus signalled that it was.