Trial and Tribulation: a Lucius Sestius short story

Lucius stood in the middle of his father’s study and lifted his chin.

“Too high,” said Cicero. “You mustn’t look defiant or arrogant, especially not at your age. A little lower – yes! That’s right.”

Lucius tried to memorise his exact stance, though he did wish his new toga wouldn’t keep sliding off his shoulder. He hadn’t yet got used to how it hung and he felt as though one shoulder was lower than the other.

“Now,” Cicero said, “I need you to cry.”

“Cry?” Lucius’ query was echoed by his sister Albinia who was also present for this strategy meeting.

“Yes, my dear young people, cry.” Cicero sounded a little impatient. “We are at the peroration of the speech now, the finale, and I shall be using every emotional trick I can. Lucius, as your father’s only son, you are particularly important and I need you to stand there in your childhood toga and cry.”

“People don’t just cry because they are told to,” Lucius objected.

He shrugged in an effort to keep the toga on and it slid off his shoulder: Cicero tutted.

“Make sure that doesn’t happen either,” he said. “As for crying, just make sure you have some raw onion handy.”

Lucius stooped and picked up the folds of his toga, wrapping up the material into a ball. He hoped that this would not take much longer.

“Let’s go over it once more,” his father said quietly. “Lucius, you and Albinia will be in the crowd, at the front where family and friends stand. You will have a bodyguard with you. Cicero, do they have to be there for the first bit, the prosecution speech?”

“I think it best that they aren’t,” Cicero said. “The prosecution are going to fling everything they can imagine at you and it won’t be pleasant. No, we shall have the men get these two into place as soon as the prosecution ends.”

“I wish Albinia didn’t have to do this,” Publius Sestius murmured. “I’d prefer it if neither of them were involved at all.”

“Sestius, you know that it will look good to the jury, loyal and tragic children supporting their beloved father,” Cicero said. “And I am afraid that all that matters now is what the jury think. Lucius, read out the testimonial from Capua again.”

Lucius picked up the piece of papyrus from his father’s desk and began to read, though he knew the words off by heart now. It was a message from the town of Capua praising his father for service rendered in earlier years. Cicero had decided that this testimonial would come near the beginning of the speech, and he would use it to draw attention to Sestius’ loyal children.

Cicero listened intently and even mouthed the phrases along with him.

When Lucius’ voice broke in the middle of one sentence, he stopped, confused and unsure what to do but Cicero grinned broadly and said, “I don’t suppose you can do that again on the day, just as you did it now?”

“Really, Cicero!” Sestius protested. “The boy is only eleven.”

“When I was eleven,” Cicero began smugly and Lucius prepared himself to be amazed. Albinia, sitting slightly behind both her father and Cicero, rolled her eyes.

“When I was eleven,” Cicero repeated, as if to ensure his audience’s attention, “my friends’ fathers would drop in at the school just to watch me declaim.”

“And I expect that made you very popular,” Sestius said wearily. “Now, you two, off you go and let me talk to Cicero in peace. Lucius, go and see your mother and get that toga folded properly.”

They fled the study thankfully. Albinia headed off to her own room and Lucius went to find his step-mother.

“Oh Lucius, are you done? Where is Albinia? And what happened to your toga?”

“I want this trial to be over!” he said and it came out louder than he meant. He saw Cornelia’s face and wished he hadn’t been quite so forceful. He tried again, more quietly, saying, “Alby went to her room,” before crouching down next to his step-sister who was on the floor at her mother’s feet. “Hello Tia. What are you doing?”

“Mama is trying to make me spin again,” said six-year-old Tia, pulling a face. “But my wool keeps going blobby.”

“It takes practice, darling,” said Cornelia. “Come and sit down next to me, Lucius, and tell me what you men are up to.”

Lucius took his seat and told her about his role in the upcoming trial. She listened carefully as he poured it all out and shook her head in sympathy as he ended with, “and when my voice broke, he asked me if I could do it again at the trial!”

“Oh Lucius, how tactless of him.” Cornelia was nice, he had to admit, even if she wasn’t his mother.

Tia looked up and said, “Why don’t we ask Melissa if we can have nut and honey cake? That would cheer Lucius up.”

“And you too, no doubt,” Cornelia said. “But it is a very good idea, so just this once, yes. Tia, go to the kitchen and ask, please.”

As his sister ran off, singing, “Nuts and honey, honey and nuts…”, Cornelia asked, “What else is bothering you, Lucius? It isn’t just having to recite that letter, is it?”

Lucius looked at the floor and felt himself going red. “I have to cry,” he muttered.

“Ah,” said Cornelia. “To get the jury’s sympathy?”

“He wants me to look young!” Lucius kicked at Cornelia’s rug on the floor and it rucked up into little hills and valleys: he bent down to straighten it again.

“Yes, it must be confusing,” said Cornelia. “We keep saying that you are growing up and I swear you have got as tall as me over the last year! And now we are telling you to be a child again.”

“It isn’t fair,” said Lucius and his voice broke again on the “fair”.

“No,” Cornelia said. “It isn’t fair that your father should pay a price for defending his friend. It isn’t fair that Cicero is going to try and win the case using these tricks. And it definitely isn’t fair that you and Albinia have to be there. But if it saves your father, I for one will be grateful to you, Lucius.”

Tia came back with the nut and honey cake and life descended into normality.

Later that day, Cornelia had conversations with several people. As a result Lucius was shown a new way of draping his toga by his father’s valet, and Sestius made sure to praise his son for a perfect recital of the letter from Capua. Tia even offered to train her brother in the art of bursting into tears on demand, which she seemed able to do perfectly.

“Maybe,” she said encouragingly, “Papa will let me do it for you. And I’m only six so everyone will feel sorry for me.”

“You’re just a girl, you can’t be there,” Lucius told her.

“Albinia is going to go,” Tia said with a glower.

“Albinia is so old she is betrothed and you are only a little girl and know nothing about the law,” Lucius said, ignoring her scowl.

As the trial got nearer, there were changes in the Sestius household. A large and uncouth man appeared in the kitchen and stayed there, while two more men stood outside the front door.

“You don’t want any visitors for a few days,” Cicero explained to Sestius as Lucius sat in a corner of the study and watched the two men going over the trial yet again. “Cornelius Rufus is rough but reliable and comes recommended by my friend Milo, so we know he’ll be good in a fight.”

“In my own home though!”

“As a precaution,” Cicero said. “My enemies want their day in court with me, and you, Sestius, are just the pretext. I am only sorry that my misfortunes have come to sit on your roof like a Harpy waiting for the feast to begin….”

“Yes, indeed,” Sestius interrupted. “But now we need peace and quiet. We all know what to do. You can rely on us, Cicero.”

Cicero ignored this invitation to leave and said, “I wish you had stopped shaving several days ago. I’d like the stubble to be clearly visible. And you have an old tunic, I hope.”

Sestius said nothing so Cicero turned to Lucius and said in a friendly tone, “And what about you, Lucius? Got the crying sorted?”

“Yes sir,” Lucius lied.

That afternoon he went to the kitchen to see Cornelius Rufus, the bodyguard. Rufus had turned out to have hidden talents and he might be able to help.

“Hello young Lucius Sestius!”

Rufus greeted everyone with enthusiasm, Lucius had noticed. Nobody wanted him there, and yet he acted as though they were all his dearest friends.

“Hello,” he said cautiously and sat the kitchen table, making sure to keep his hands and arms under the table as Melissa chopped something green into tiny pieces. She gave him a smile.

“Want me to trounce you at Little Robbers again?” Cornelius Rufus asked.

“No, but there’s something I have to do and I don’t know if I can,” Lucius said.

Melissa looked at him, swept the chopped green stuff onto a plate and turned back to her cooking range.

“Ah, and you thought what with me being a man of the world, I could help?” Rufus beamed. “Not got girl trouble have you?”

“No!” Lucius shot a look at Melissa’s back and hoped she hadn’t heard.

“Well then, what? Tell your uncle Rufus.”

“I have to cry, at the end of Cicero’s speech,” Lucius muttered. “When he points at me and says something about me having tears in my eyes, I have to start crying.”

“Oh that is a hard one,” Rufus agreed. “How you going to do it?”

“Cicero says to carry a raw onion on me,” Lucius said.

“Well that might work,” and Rufus’ face screwed up in revulsion.

“No it won’t,” Melissa called from the range. “It’s got to be freshly chopped to work. You can’t carry a knife and a chopping board around with you. Couldn’t you just think of something sad?”

This was not serious Lucius knew, and he managed a smile for her.

“I tell you what,” Rufus said, “you leave it with me, young Lucius. I’m guarding you and your sister on the day, and I’ll make sure you cry.”

“Oh.” Lucius did not like the sound of that. “It won’t hurt will it?”

“Hardly at all,” and Rufus patted Lucius’ shoulder.

On the third day before the Ides of March, Lucius walked behind his father and Cicero along the road down to the Forum. He hadn’t slept, draping his toga had taken forever even with help, and he felt ridiculously over-dressed next to his father who wore the traditionally dingy clothes of the defendant. Sestius walked head down, with Cicero guiding him as though his client were unable to walk properly on his own. They were surrounded by men who looked as though they should be in the legions – or even the arena. Albinia walked on one side of Lucius, with Rufus on his other side and mercifully quiet, although Lucius couldn’t help noticing that Rufus’ hand kept patting at the leather pouch that hung from his belt. Surely Rufus wouldn’t have come armed? Lucius clutched the papyrus with the Capuan testimonial written on it, and thought to himself, “It will be over soon….”

The first moves in the trial went as expected, and after the prosecution speech had ended a small group of bodyguards moved Lucius and Albinia right up to the front of the crowd facing the court. Their father, as he had warned them, did not smile but reached out a hand as Cicero first mentioned them. Lucius read out the Capuan statement without any voice breaks or stumbling, and Albinia squeezed his hand when he had finished. Now all they had to do was to wait through the rest of the speech until the moment at the end when Cicero would point out Lucius once more. Lucius knew the stages of Cicero’s speech by now and counted them down – his father’s career, a long description of Cicero’s own troubles, the dramatic Forum riot of the previous year, and an analysis of Roman politics. Lucius tensed as his cue got nearer.

“I see Publius Sestius, my rock, my defender, warrior in the cause of the republic, and now on trial….”

Lucius felt Rufus grab him by the shoulder and before he knew what was happening a small glass tube was thrust under his nose. He opened his mouth to ask Rufus what he was doing – and it hit him. The dark liquid at the bottom of the tube stank, with the sort of stink that hit the back of the mouth, clawed at the top of the nostrils, a scent so sharp his eyes automatically filled with tears. Lucius was aware of people shuffling away from him, then he was overwhelmed by the tears streaming down his face. He heard Cicero’s words:

“I see Sestius’ son, still in the toga of childhood, his eyes full of tears….”

It seemed that everyone watching the trial tried to get a look at him and Lucius concentrated on making no noise as his eyes, mouth and nose stung.

“Do you want a handkerchief?” Albinia muttered and he shook his head. Just a little longer…

“…this boy, here, his tears proclaiming his love for his father….”

Automatically, heads turned once more and Lucius snuffled desperately, trying to look tragic while ignoring his running nose.

Cicero’s speech swept on to its dramatic end and Albinia passed Lucius a large handkerchief. As the crowd erupted into cheers at the end of yet another magnificent piece of oratory from Marcus Tullius Cicero, Lucius blew and mopped, and then the bodyguards were escorting them back through the crowd.

Behind a convenient column, Albinia looked closely at Lucius and said crossly, “Cornelius Rufus, what in the name of all the gods was that stuff?”

“I got it from one of those old biddies who tell your fortune outside the Capena Gate,” said Rufus grinning. “Good, wasn’t it? She said she couldn’t tell me the ingredients, but she sang a very impressive charm over it.”

“Good gods, you could have created a riot in the middle of the forum!” Albinia said, exasperated.

“Nah, me and Melissa tried it out in the back yard,” Rufus said. “We found the perfect amount, just enough to make your eyes sting, Lucius. Nice woman, that Melissa.”

Albinia took the glass vial and sniffed gingerly, pulling a face. “Ugh, this is vinegar! It’s been boiled down a bit, that’s why it’s so….”

“Gloopy,” Lucius supplied. He looked at the vial but wouldn’t put his face anywhere near it.

“Don’t forget the mystery ingredients,” said Rufus. “And the charm. Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Whatever she charged you, it was too much. I hope you don’t intend to claim the cost back from my father,” Albinia said.

“Understood, miss.” Cornelius Rufus sounded almost respectful but winked at Lucius. “Now, let’s get you two home.”

“Wait.” Lucius had to ask. “Will it work? The speech I mean.”

Albinia and Rufus both said, “Yes.”

Rufus added, “Bloody good speech, pardon my Greek, but everyone loved it. Mind you, it didn’t mention your father much.”

“I noticed that,” Albinia said, adding, “There was, however, a lot about Cicero.”

“We’ll know tomorrow,” Rufus said. “Not long to wait. It’s good to have Cicero back, he puts on a fancy show.”

“Well,” said Lucius, “that’s all right then.” He took one step forward and his toga slid off his shoulder. Lucius almost shouted in frustration, but his sister caught the errant fold and began unwrapping, rolling the toga up as it fell off him. Freed at last, Lucius began to run back up the Caelian Hill.