“Will you answer us?” yelled the black-eyed man.
“Who are you to make demands of a praetor?” Juventius yelled back.
More people were forcing their way forward. The people made way for one of them, and he mounted the steps. He wore no insignia of office, but he was treated with unmistakable respect. He stepped up to the body and studied it for a moment. He was a very young man with good bearing and a tough-looking, pugnacious face. I didn’t recognize him, but such youth coupled with such respect from the people meant one thing: a Tribune of the People.
Others were gathering on the steps behind me. Cato had arrived and Appius Claudius. I beckoned Cato to me. “Who is this boy?” I asked him.
He studied the youth for a moment. “Publius Manilius. Not a supporter of Caesar and no friend of Pompey either. He’s one to watch.”
At that moment the young man we were discussing was watching me. Fulvius’s crowd were speaking urgently into his ears, which I almost expected to curl up and wither under the assault of all that garlic. At last he waved them off and came up the steps toward us.
“Marcus Fulvius,” he proclaimed in a fine, resonant voice, “has been murdered on the day he was to appear in court to denounce Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger before the court of the praetor Marcus Juventius Laterensis. Murder has been committed, and no one had a greater reason to see Fulvius dead than you, Metellus.”
“I had every reason to show him for a fool and his witnesses as perjurers, no more than that. I never heard of him before yesterday. I need to know a man better than that to want to kill him.”
“I will convoke the Plebeian Assembly to discuss this matter,” Manilius said. “Until our decision has been reached, the election for praetors will not be held!” At this a huge shout went up.
“You can’t do that!” Cato said, when the crowd had quieted.
“You’ve been a tribune, Cato,” Manilius shot back. “And you know that I can. I will not allow a man under suspicion of murdering a citizen to be elected to high office, immune from prosecution for a full year and holding imperium to boot.”
“I have a question,” I said.
“What is it?” Manilius asked.
I pointed at the knot of Fulvius’s men. “Where are the witnesses against me? Fulvius said he would bring before the court these citizens I supposedly oppressed and robbed on Cyprus. Where are they?”
“You stand accused of a far more serious charge, Metellus,” the tribune said. “You would do well to concentrate on defending yourself against this charge, not the one you will not now be tried on.”
“I still want an answer! You!” I pointed at the red-haired flunky. “What has happened to these witnesses?”
“They—they were staying in the house of Fulvius. We were to bring them all here to the court, but we found his house deserted. You must have done away with all of them!” He spoke too fast, his eyes darting about. He had not rehearsed this. Nobody had prepared him for the question.
Manilius raised a hand. “I enjoin silence! I am calling a contio of the Plebeian Assembly to meet this afternoon, and there I will entertain motions for a trial of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger on the charge of the murder of Marcus Fulvius. For now I bid you all disperse!”
Slowly the big knot of people began breaking up into smaller and smaller knots, until people were distributed almost evenly in all parts of the Forum, back to the usual market-day business of the election season. It was an almost magical process and one that never ceased to amaze me, how a nearly riotous mob can revert to a peaceful gathering of citizens in a moment. I was especially glad to see it happen this time.
Fulvius’s little band still stood around the body, apparently at a loss what to do with it.
“I want to examine that body,” I said. “Maybe the way he was killed can tell us something.”
“No one touch that body until the Libitinani get here,” Juventius ordered. “You lot leave now. I will see that Fulvius is delivered to whatever family he may have in the City. Go now.”
“Do as the praetor says,” Manilius told them. “We will discuss this at the meeting, where our decisions will have legal authority. What we say here is just idle noise.”
Reluctantly they obeyed him. Then Manilius himself left, probably to round up his fellow tribunes.
“Damned tribuneship,” Father groused. “It gives too much power to men too young and inexperienced. That boy is acting like a consul, and he hasn’t a lictor to his name.”
I shrugged. “He handled the situation well enough. We might have had a riot. That’s what those men wanted, but they didn’t dare dispute with a Tribune of the People, whatever their hostility to the Senate.”
“So there’s to be no trial,” Appius said, “but no election either! If their plan is to keep you from office, they’re succeeding so far.”
“But,” I pointed out, “if he’d let the praetorship elections go on, he could have demanded that I be taken off the ballot because I’m charged with murder. This way I have a chance to clear myself and still be present for the election. In the meantime the Centuriate Assembly can amuse itself electing next year’s consuls and censors. It will just mean a longer election season. What Roman ever complains about a prolonged holiday?”
“But can you clear yourself?” Juventius asked.
“Easily,” I told him. “I’m innocent and the gods love me. Now if you will excuse me, I want a look at this body.”
The Libitinarii had arrived on the scene, dressed in their bizarre, Etruscan outfits, carrying their stretcher and accompanied by their priest. The priest went through his purification ritual, then the masked undertakers tugged the bloody toga off, then peeled away the sticky tunic, exposing the mortal remains of the late Marcus Fulvius.
There had been a tremendous effusion of blood, and it was easy to see why. He had been stabbed enough times to kill Achilles. I was no expert like my friend Asklepiodes, but even I could see that more than one weapon had been involved and that meant more than one assailant. There were stab wounds from a narrow-bladed dagger, others from a broad-bladed dagger or sword, yet others that looked like slashes, or rather wide rents, like a clumsy job of butchering. Some of the wounds gaped wide enough that I could see they were not especially deep. Loops of viscera bulged through cuts in his belly, but none of the gashes was large enough to eviscerate the man.
There was a large cut slanting from just behind his left ear to the joining of the collarbones. This wound alone would have been sufficient to kill him. None of the others I could see would have been immediately fatal. There were no wounds visible on his limbs or head.
“Turn him over,” I told the undertakers. They rolled him over. There were no wounds on his back.
“That poor bastard died hard.” I looked up to see Sallustius, who was never far from the center of excitement in Rome.
“Any man who’s served in the legions knows how to kill a man better than that,” Cato said. “A quick stab in the right place is all it takes. He must have been set upon by common cutthroats.”
I looked at the tunic, which was almost stiff with blood. It was a dark one, made of coarse cloth. The almost equally bloody toga was little better, made of raw, undyed wool, a dingy brown color.
I stood. “He wasn’t on his way to court dressed like this,” I noted. “And look how nearly dry this blood is. He must have died hours ago. I want this body taken to the Temple of Venus Libitina before it’s turned over to his family so that Asklepiodes can examine it.”
“You have no authority to order such a thing,” Juventius reminded me. “But I’ll order it so. If your prosecutor wants an explanation, it’s because the end of the year is near and you have little time to formulate your defense, so I am allowing you extraordinary privileges to clear yourself.” He left it unsaid that I now owed him a big political favor.
I took Hermes by the shoulder. “Go get Asklepiodes. Tell him to meet with me and the unfortunate Marcus Fulvius at the templ
e immediately.”
“I’m off.” And so he was.
“What do you expect to learn from the Greek?” Father wanted to know.
“I have some fairly strong suspicions, and I’d like to have them confirmed by an expert. I’ll explain when I am more certain of the facts.”
They all took on the look they got when I spoke of my methods of ferreting out the facts of a case. I had won many prosecutions my way, but it never convinced them. They thought the proper way to win a case was to get prominent people to swear to your innocence and the vileness of your opponent. Then you bribed the jury.
A litter made its way across the Forum and stopped at the basilica. Hortensius Hortalus emerged, accompanied by the aged Claudius Marcellus. Still augur-robed and leaning on his lituus, he trudged up the steps to where we stood.
“What’s all this?” he asked, looking down at the body. His friends filled him in on the morning’s doings while I examined the steps. I hoped to find signs of whether the body had been dragged or carried to the basilica, but the crowd had gathered too quickly. If there had been bloodstains, they were now on the bottoms of a thousand pairs of sandals. I was, however, certain that the murder had not been committed on the spot where the body was found. There would have been a small river of blood running down the steps, more than could have been obliterated by a legion tramping through.
“Did you perceive any omens?” I asked Hortalus.
“Not a thing,” he admitted. “It was too cloudy to see the stars, no birds flew in the night, and we heard no thunder from any direction. Of course, since there’s to be no trial, omens were scarcely called for. Marcus Fulvius was no prince, so comets and bloody rains are hardly to be expected.”
“It would have been convenient,” Cato said, “if you’d seen something to stop this convening of the Plebeian Assembly.”
“Actually,” Father put in, “some good legal advice is what is called for now.”
Hortalus turned to me. “Decius, I think you should find out whatever you can to blacken the reputation of Marcus Fulvius. Treason would be nice.”
I managed to shake my way free of Sallustius and the others and made my way to the Temple of Venus in her aspect as death goddess. It had recently been handsomely restored by Caesar. Although his family traced their descent from Venus Genetrix, Caesar had been generous to any temple of Venus in need of refurbishing.
Asklepiodes arrived shortly after I did, carried on a fine litter by a team of matched Nubians. Hermes and two of the physician’s Egyptian slaves followed. He had grown quite wealthy over the years, and, unlike most of his profession, he did it through sound medical practice not by selling quack cures. He was the only physician to whom I entrusted my lacerations.
“Greetings, Decius Caecilius!” he said, alighting from his conveyance. “Rejoice! So lately returned to Rome; so soon involved in a murder!”
“Not just involved. Accused.”
“And not for the first time. Let’s have a look at the departed.”
The body had been laid out on a bier and washed. With the blood off him Marcus Fulvius looked, if anything, even more ghastly. There is something especially grotesque about a body that has had all the blood drained from it. He was white as a cauliflower, except for the relatively colorful bulges of viscera. Even the gaping wounds were pale pink instead of scarlet. Adding to the strangeness of the scene was the contrast between the ravaged body and the untouched head and limbs.
Asklepiodes made a gesture and the Egyptians came forward. One carried, by a strap over his shoulder, a box elaborately decorated with mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli. This man opened the box and the other, at Asklepiodes’ murmured instructions, removed surgical instruments and began to probe at the wounds. In his own surgery, Asklepiodes might have wielded the instruments himself, but he would never allow the priests of the temple to see a haughty physician using his hands like a common surgeon. As each wound was spread wider he leaned over, examined it, and made wise sounds. Finally, he stepped back.
“Well?” I said.
“No doubt about it, this man is dead.”
“It is good to be in the presence of genius. What else?”
“Someone was being—how shall I put this?—rather delicate about this murder. We have the marks of at least three different blades, any one of which would have been quite sufficient to cause death, but they were used to deal wounds that were grievous, some of them fatal over a matter of hours or days, yet not causing immediate death.”
“Cato noted the inefficiency of the blows,” I said, “and he is not a particularly observant man.”
“The cut to the great vessel of the neck”—Asklepiodes pointed to the wound below the left ear—“would have been fatal within seconds, yet I believe it was dealt last, as if the man were being too leisurely about dying. All these stabs to the abdomen for instance. A single stab here,” he pointed to the apex of the rib arch just below the sternum, “angled slightly upward, would have pierced the heart and brought about immediate death. I have the distinct impression that these men did not want their victim to die quickly.”
“You mentioned three weapons.”
“At least three, possibly more.”
“Can you describe them?”
“There were two types: one narrow-bladed, the other broad. I see wounds produced by at least one of these narrow blades. The dagger was no more than an inch wide, its cross-section of a flattened diamond shape. There were at least two broad-bladed daggers used: both were in excess of two inches wide, one made of rather thin steel with a thickened midrib for rigidity. The other was of stouter metal without the midrib. Instead it had three parallel grooves to add strength and rigidity to the blade, as well as to lighten it and confer better balance.” As physician to the gladiators of the Statilian ludus, his knowledge of edged weapons was comprehensive.
“Like a soldier’s pugio?” I asked.
“Pugios have such blades.”
“And all the weapons were double-edged? These cuts look like they were made by a sica.” I referred to the curved, single-edged knife favored by street thugs.
“These were not delivered as cuts. The wounds are very asymmetrical. In each case the blade was stabbed in, then dragged from right to left as it was withdrawn. This is characteristic of a right-handed assailant. The gash thus opened is wide, but not very deep. A typical sica cut is symmetrical and deepest in the center.”
“So we are looking at a minimum of three murderers?” I asked.
“At least three knife wielders and possibly more. But there were others involved.”
“How so?”
“You notice that there are no wounds to the hands and arms?”
“I wondered at that.”
“Any man, seeing hostile blades attacking his body, will try to ward them off instinctively. For this many weapons to have landed on his torso, he should have received many cuts on his arms and hands.”
“He was held.”
“Held from behind, hence no wounds in the back.”
“Is it possible he was bound?” I asked.
“A man being killed struggles hard against bindings. It leaves deep ligature marks on the wrists, and this man has none. I believe that, had the body not bled out so thoroughly, we should see bruises on the shoulders and arms, where at least two strong men held him fast while he was stabbed.”
Hermes spoke up. “Might he have been asleep? If he was lying on his back there’d be no wounds there, and by the time he woke up he might have been too weak to defend himself.”
“No,” Asklepiodes said, “these blows were not delivered downward. The angle of entry would be quite different.”
“Besides,” I said, “he was stabbed through his tunic.” I looked around and found a temple slave. “Bring us the dead man’s garments.” He trotted off and in a few minutes I told the physician about the strange events of the last two days.
A few minutes later the slave brought the bloody toga and tunic. He even had
the dead man’s sandals. “We were about to burn them,” the slave said.
“I am going to keep these as evidence.” At my request Asklepiodes’ slaves spread the clothes on the floor. There were numerous rents in the tunic, but the toga, though stained, was whole.
“It looks like he wasn’t wearing the toga when he was killed. The murderers must have wrapped him up in it to carry him to the Forum and leave his body where we were sure to find it.”
“Why was he wearing such shabby clothes?” Hermes wanted to know.
“I am wondering that, too. He was of good birth, although he’d won no distinction in Rome. Yesterday, when he berated me in the Forum, his clothes were of good quality. He would have worn his best coming to appear in court today. Hermes, I want you to take these home with you. They might prove significant later on.”
“Carry these rags?” he exclaimed with horror. “They’re unclean!”
“You’re ready enough to shed other peoples’ blood. I don’t see why you should object to getting a little of it on you. It’s all but dry, anyway.”
“I’m not going to touch this stuff,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t care how many purifications the priest performs.”
“I hate superstition,” I said. “All right, there should be a sack around here someplace. Get a temple slave to bag this up for you first.” He went off in search of one.
“Sometimes I regret giving that boy his freedom,” I said to Asklepiodes. “Now he thinks he’s too good to run errands.”
“He’s grown into a fine-looking young man though. I’ve missed seeing him practice at the school in recent months.”
“He should be glad I never sent him to the mines.”
“I trust your lady, Julia, is well? Is she still bothered by her family complaint?” By this he meant the famous difficulty the Caesars had with conception and pregnancy. Since our marriage Julia had conceived three times and miscarried by the fourth month in all three cases.
“Still. I try to comfort her, tell her that this is her heritage and there is no disgrace in it, but she feels humiliated nonetheless.”
SPQR X: A Point of Law Page 5