Render Unto Caesar (35 page)

“Rufus spent a hundred million sestertii,” he stated with cold disgust, “all the capital he possessed, on land in Picenum—then discovered that if he was to make a profit from the land, he needed to pay for improvements to it. He borrowed the money from Pollio, using the land as security. The interest on the loan is either nearly as much as the profit from the land, or slightly more. If he sells, his indebtedness will come out, and the price of his assets will crash. He was managing to keep Pollio at bay, however, until I chanced to arrive. Many years ago in Cyprus Rufus borrowed money from my uncle which he never repaid; I inherited the debt last autumn, and arrived in Rome determined to press my claim. I am a Roman citizen, able to use the courts; I have documents proving my right, and though Rufus tried to intimidate me, he failed. He found himself unable to escape my claim, and to pay me, he would have to sell. Pollio has offered to buy out my debt and, so I believe, hand me over to him, if he will take your life. He has agreed.”

A hand grabbed his chin and wrenched his head around again. “So you say,” rumbled Taurus.

He tried to speak, and could not: the hand was crushing his jaw. Taurus saw it, and let go. Hermogenes rested his cheek against the pillar again, looking into his captor's eyes. “I am sick of you Romans!” he whispered. “Pollio said that Rufus, more than most of you, has always the sense that we Greeks are sneering at you as barbarians behind your backs. Let me sneer at you to your face, then. Look at you! You have no respect for justice, for law, for contract and the obligations of civilization—you, prefect of the city, and Rufus, a consul, are both of you happy to flout every law the Senate and People ever decreed the moment it conflicts with your own self-interest. You are and ever will be
savages.
Your great contribution to culture is out there in the yard hitting each other with swords; your arts are oppression and the shedding of blood. May the gods destroy you all.”

Taurus hit him. It was a calculated blow, a hand jabbed edgewise under the arm to catch the nerve, and it hurt horribly. He caught his breath with a gasp, trying to support himself against the pillar. His arm was numb. A second blow caught him under the ribs, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He hung in the chains, struggling to get air.

“You forget yourself, Greek,” said Taurus.

Hermogenes pulled himself upright by the chains, still panting. “No: you forget yourself, Roman,” he managed. “Or is it
legal
for prefects of the city to beat citizens during ‘extraordinary' hearings?”

Taurus raised his hand again—then lowered it and turned away.

There was a silence. Hermogenes leaned against the pillar, breathing hard. All he could see now was the wall, and the whips hanging there. He nursed his anger, letting it burn hot and high and keep away the fear. Three times he had gone to an important Roman, asking for things he had a right to ask for; three times he had been insulted and abused.

“There is a letter here which your bodyguard was carrying,” came Taurus's voice from somewhere to his left.

He tilted his head back and managed to turn it and get his other cheek against the pillar. Taurus was standing a few feet away, the letter to Myrrhine in his hand, opened.

“That is a private letter,” he told the general bitterly. “You had no right to see it.”

Taurus wagged it back and forth. “Why did your bodyguard have it?”

“She was to pass it on in the event of my death, and our lodgings aren't safe. I knew the risk I was taking, coming to you: I never imagined you would welcome news of a friend's treachery. You have no reason to prevent my bodyguard from sending that letter. Since you have read it, you have
seen
that it is a private letter, and of no interest to you at all—unless you intend to amuse yourself by mocking it and me. If you do, may you die childless and alone.”

“‘My attempt to collect the debt from Rufus,'” Taurus read out, the Greek words strange and sonorous in that place of Roman punishment, “‘has brought me into opposition to two very powerful men who have schemes I knew nothing about, but to whom I have now become a threat.'
Two
powerful men, Greek? Rufus and who else?”

“Pollio,” Hermogenes answered impatiently. “I already told you that, if you recollect. He wants to kill me because he fears I have guessed enough of his plans to betray them—to you. A pointless and stupid fear, isn't it? Here I am, trying to do exactly what he fears, and there are you, preparing to flog me to prevent it. Pollio could have sent me to you himself, and spared himself trouble.”

“All I want from you is the truth, Greek.”

Hermogenes spat. “You could have had the
truth
for the asking, Roman. I came here to tell it to you, and I said as much. No: you want me to lie. You want me to say that your friend is blameless, and that I am not an innocent businessman caught up in the schemes of powerful Romans but a wicked conspirator and blackmailer myself. Torture me long enough and I probably
will
say it. Perhaps I will say it now, and spare myself the torture. Then you can give me to Rufus, and he will kill me—and, in due course, kill you.”

“Tell me about this debt you came to collect from Rufus, ‘innocent businessman.'”

“And if I say something you dislike, will you use the whip yourself, or will you allow the Savage to change my story?”

Taurus stared at him for a long moment, his jaw working. Then he raised a hand. “Unchain him,” he ordered.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then the guards came over, loosened the chain, and unfastened the manacles. Hermogenes drew his arms down slowly and stepped away from the pillar. His right arm was still numb from the general's blow, but it had started to prickle with pain. He flexed the fingers, staring at them as they moved, then glanced around for his clothes. Taurus gave a nod, and one of the guards handed him his tunic. He put it on, belted it clumsily with his numbed hand. “My bodyguard,” he said, without looking round.

Someone went behind him to the far wall: he turned to watch them, and saw that the “punishment cell” adjoined the room—a narrow cellar, too small to stand in upright, windowless and with a single door. The Savage unlocked the door and went in. After a little, he came out again, carrying the iron shackles. Behind him came Cantabra, still naked apart from her underclothes. She looked at him anxiously.

He indicated the door to the office and started for it himself. The guards stirred, but Taurus raised a hand, and they subsided.

Back in the office, Hermogenes moved his good cloak to one side of the bench, then sat down to put on his sandals. Taurus had followed him out of the punishment room, and watched him put them on. At the other side of the room, Cantabra was hurriedly pulling on her tunic.

“So,” said Taurus. “Now will you talk?”

Hermogenes turned to face him. “Am I under arrest, Lord Prefect? And if so, who has charged me, and with what crime, or who has called me as a witness? For one or the other must be true, if I am under arrest and this is a legal hearing.”

Taurus frowned.

“If this is a legal hearing,” Hermogenes went on, “where is the prosecutor? For I think that, however ‘extraordinary' it may be, the judge who hears the case is not allowed to play that role himself. And where is the counsel for the defense—and, for that matter, what
is
the case that is being heard? I should like to know that, if I am under arrest.”

“You are not under arrest,” Taurus conceded.

“Then I will go.” Hermogenes marched to the desk and picked up the pen case. The letters of credit were underneath it, and he rolled them up and stuffed them in.

“No!” Taurus exclaimed impatiently. “You said you came here to tell me about this!”

“So I did,” Hermogenes replied, rounding on him again. “But if it escaped your notice that you responded by having me stripped and chained to a flogging post, I assure you, it did not escape mine. And now I find myself strangely unwilling to help you, and—I do not know why!—suspicious of your goodwill and your good faith. So I think I will simply go away again and see if I can't find a way out of my difficulties which does not involve relying upon a Roman. Kindly return to me the letter I wrote to my daughter.”

“You are very angry,” observed Taurus. “Consider that you are accusing a man I have for many years regarded as a protégé and friend, and that I have cause to believe you are his enemy and the agent of a man I despise.”

“I considered it before,” Hermogenes replied. “I expected suspicion; I feared that you would not believe me. I did not expect violence and the threat of torture as the
first recourse
—the
first
recourse, before you had even questioned me! Zeus! Can you really expect me to trust you now?”

Taurus looked at him for a long moment, then said slowly, “I am ready to listen to you, Greek. You can talk, or you can satisfy your indignation by walking out.”

Hermogenes stood still, trying to get control of his breathing, which kept threatening to turn into pants of rage and pain. Then he shuddered, set down the pen case, pressed his hands to his face, and swore.

“Tell me about this debt you came to collect from my friend Lucius Rufus,” ordered Taurus, sitting down at the desk again.

He told him briefly, keeping back the whereabouts of the documents and the token that provided access to them. He recounted his meeting with Pollio, the way he had been detained, the encounter with Rufus in the bathhouse, Pollio's decision to buy the debt, and his own suspicion and escape. Taurus listened in forbidding silence, occasionally glancing at Cantabra, and seeming to find confirmation of the story in her expression.

When he had finished, the Roman sat staring moodily at the desk for a long time. Hermogenes stood before him cradling his arm, which now ached and felt hot.

“Even if you are telling the truth,” Taurus said at last, looking up, “you do not know that Rufus has agreed.”

“Pollio told me he would buy the debt,” Hermogenes pointed out. “If Rufus had refused he would have told me that he would protect me while I summoned the consul for nonpayment.”

“Which you would have done,” said Taurus, with a flash of anger.

“Do you recommend a general cancellation of debts?” Hermogenes asked acidly. “If you do, is your friend the emperor aware of it? In Egypt there are laws, approved by the Romans, which call that recommendation treason. Or is your opinion merely that friends of the emperor have the right to take money from whomever they please without repayment? I had the impression that the emperor would not like that view any more than the other, since he has proclaimed the restoration of the Republic—and the Senate would like the notion even less.”

Taurus glowered, then made a gesture of concession. “Rufus should have repaid your uncle. I suspect even he realizes that now.”

“He does not,” Hermogenes said flatly, glaring at the Roman. “He considers he was fully entitled to take money from a Greek, and he blames his troubles upon my insolent refusal to accept that—as do you.”

“Because you are indeed a very insolent and troublesome man!” replied Taurus, leaning forward to fix him with a lowering glare. “Understand: I could charge you with treason. You prayed for the destruction of Rome. I have witnesses to that. You saw fit to rebuke me for striking you for it, but I could legitimately have you
killed
.”

“Your witnesses would also have to testify that I cursed Romans during a proceeding which was clearly illegal,” Hermogenes said coolly. “I do not think you are likely to call them. As for my opinion of Rome and Romans—I am a Roman citizen, and until I came to this city, I was proud of it. I have never advocated or practiced any sedition.
I
have never called for the cancellation of debts, or pretended that the laws pronounced by the Senate and People don't apply to me and my friends.”

“Enough!” shouted Taurus, and slapped the desk.

There was a silence. Hermogenes noticed that his ankle was hurting again. He remembered that the guards had taken away the bandage for it, and glanced around to see what they'd done with it. The long strip of linen was crumpled up under the bench. He went over, picked it up, sat down, took off his sandal, and began wrapping the foot again—slowly, because his right arm hurt.

“You said,” Taurus resumed at last, “that Pollio feared you had guessed enough of his plans to betray them. What
have
you guessed of them?”

Hermogenes shrugged. The bandage was creased, and he tried to straighten it. “I think he plans to create some sort of public disorder. Riots, or a fire. Something which would allow him to step forward with money and help, and be restored to the emperor's friendship on a wave of popular acclaim. From the way you speak of him, you are his enemy, and presumably he believes that if he tried such a trick while you were alive, you would instantly suspect him and take steps to find him out—which, as prefect of the city, you would be well placed to do. Rufus, on the other hand, as consul would be in a position to help him.”

Taurus grunted. After another silence he said, “I do not take your bare word for any of this, Greek.”

“I never imagined that you would.” Hermogenes tied the bandage and pulled his sandal on again. “You will have to investigate it, obviously, and perhaps devise some test of your friend's intentions.” He straightened, facing the prefect again. “You will find that it is as I say.”

Taurus grunted again. “When does your letter go to Scipio?”

“The first of July.”

“Four days,” the prefect commented with distaste. “That is not very long. Scipio is an arrogant bungler with more ancestors than wits; he must at all costs be kept out of a delicate business like this one. You must collect that letter.”