“They might have forced him to strip before giving him his passage on the ferryboat.”
“Then why not cut his throat? It is the swiftest and surest method for dispatching a man with a knife. I’ll tell you why: These people can’t shake off their aristocratic habits. They want to make it look like bandits did it, but they have to stab their victim from in front, like gentlemen.”
“A strange sort of oversight, one would think,” Asklepiodes commented.
“They intend never to be called to account for their crimes,” I said. “It is to maintain their own good opinion of themselves and each other that they commit murder as if they were soldiers striking down an enemy. Doubtless these men tell each other that they are acting out of patriotic motives.”
“ ‘Patriotic’?” Asklepiodes gestured with his beautifully manicured hands like an actor in a comedy who is at his wit’s end. “But this is so puzzling. Not only killing a very obscure Greek philosopher from patriotic motives but constructing so elaborate a conspiracy to prevent one man from attaining the office of praetor. I hope you are not offended that I wonder at this.”
“Oh, I’m under no such delusion. I am just the immediate and rather a minor target, I’m afraid. These men have designs on the whole Republic.”
“Ah,” he said, with satisfaction. “That is on a scale rather more grand. To my poor mind, though, the details remain wreathed in obscurity.”
“They are not very plain to me either, but I think I am beginning to see where this is all headed. Three men named Claudius Marcellus, two brothers and a cousin, are pushing us toward civil war. One of them is this year’s consul, another will be next year’s, the third will very likely be consul the year after. They are doing everything in their power to turn the whole Senate against Caesar. This is a plot made simpler by the fact that Caesar does so little to ingratiate himself with that body.
“Like good generals, these Claudii are making long-range war plans. They’ve assembled their forces, and probably not only in the Senate but all over our Empire. They’ve agitated among the people but without great success. The plebs love Caesar.” I thought about that for a moment. “They’ve probably had more success in the south. Their base is in Baiae, and the southern part of the peninsula is almost solidly for Pompey. His veterans have settled there.
“But their most forward-looking policy has been to arrange for a truly ingenious cipher to keep all their conspiratorial correspondence secret. I know of no other planners, military or civil, who have taken such a precaution.”
“It is not characteristic of you Romans,” Asklepiodes agreed. “Your flair for careful planning is, of course, world-famed. But you are not known for your subtlety. This is almost, how should I put this? Almost Greek.”
“Exactly. You know, I can’t begin to count how many conspiracies and even military operations I know of that have come to grief because correspondence, reports, or dispatches have been intercepted. The Catilinarian conspirators were so inept that the most illustrious men actually appended their personal signatures and seals to letters sent to prospective allies.”
“Perhaps you Romans have not been literate long enough to understand the perils hidden in the written word. The great kings of Persia have been using ciphers for centuries, although I confess I have no idea how such codes work.”
“I just wish I knew whether Pompey is involved. I rather doubt it. Subtlety was never his style.”
At that moment Hermes burst in, breathing hard, sweating and grinning. “Oh, good! I’ve caught you before you could get away!”
“You’ve learned something important?” I turned to Asklepiodes. “I sent him to the house of Caius Marcellus to bribe some information out of the man’s slaves.”
“I may have, but that’s not why I ran all the way to Callista’s and then here. You’ve got to come to the Forum. There’s a show going on there you won’t want to miss!”
“What?” I was totally mystified.
“Last night someone attacked Curio and tried to murder him!”
“Is he dead?” I got to my feet. This had to be tied to my own difficulties.
“No, just knocked about and cut up a bit. But the real show is Fulvia. She’s gone down to the Forum like a blood-soaked Fury, and she’s baying for vengeance.”
“Jupiter preserve us all,” I groaned. “The last time Fulvia put on a show, the mob burned the Curia and half the buildings around it.”
“This I must see,” Asklepiodes said, gleefully. “Let’s take my litter. I can get us there far more speedily than the two of you can make it on foot.”
10
ORDINARILY, A LITTER GETS YOU where you are going no more quickly than if you had walked. It just gets you there in style and much cleaner than if you had braved Rome’s unsanitary streets. The litter of Asklepiodes was different.
First, there were his bearers. They were all powerful men and trained runners. The physician often had to rush to the site of an emergency and did not want to waste time. He used eight of them, instead of the more common four or six, so that each would bear a lighter load. Perhaps even more important, though, was the flying wedge of gladiators that cleared the way before us. Rome’s narrow streets were easily jammed, and they tended to get more so as you approached the Forum, especially if there was something interesting happening there, as there was on this morning.
For obvious reasons the gladiators of Statilius Taurus prized their surgeon and were always willing to do anything to keep him happy. Up front we had a dozen of them, all huge men who positively loved hard, physical contact. Thus we were able to cross the City at a running pace.
“All right,” I said to Hermes, as we lounged behind the closed curtains, “tell me what you learned.”
Hermes mopped his face with a fold of his tunic. His sweat was testimony to his exertions that morning. He was in superb physical shape, and it took a strenuous sprint to bring perspiration to his brow.
“I managed to catch some of Caius Claudius’s slaves on their way to the fruit and vegetable market. One of them was the cook who had been assigned to the house of Fulvius. There were six of them assigned, and I was lucky to catch this one because the others were all Syrians barely able to understand Latin.”
“Didn’t I tell you these were careful plotters?” I said to Asklepiodes. “The slaves they lent their man were foreign, so that they wouldn’t be able to understand or repeat what they overheard. Too many people blab as if their slaves weren’t there.”
Hermes nodded agreement. “But the cook had to know Latin because she had to do the marketing. Unfortunately, she was mostly confined to the kitchen and didn’t hear much. But the man had callers at all hours of day and night, and the conversations out front got pretty heated.”
“Had she any idea who the visitors were?”
“She said they mostly had low-class accents, but a few were high class, and it was most often those voices she heard arguing.”
“She didn’t hear any details of their conversations at all?”
“None she was willing to talk about. Remember, she is still a slave.”
A slave’s lot is not a happy one in cases of this sort. They can only testify under torture, and a slave who voluntarily testifies against his master can look forward to a short and miserable life. I recalled that, after the killing of Clodius, Milo freed all the slaves who had been with him, ostensibly as a reward for saving him from Clodius (as if Titus Milo ever needed saving from anybody) but actually so that they could not be put to torture in the trial he knew was coming.
“Well, what did you learn?” I demanded impatiently.
“Three days ago, late in the evening, a slave came from the home of Caius Marcellus and told the slaves in Fulvius’s house that they were to gather whatever personal belongings they had there and return to their master’s house at once. Fulvius wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else.”
Three days ago meant the night before we had found Fulvius murdered. “You say a sla
ve summoned them? Was it the steward?”
“No. She said it was one of Octavia’s staff, a man from her old household before she married Marcellus.”
“Were the other slaves part of Octavia’s staff or dowry?”
“From the way she talked, they were all Marcellus’s property. Do you think it’s important?”
“Hermes, in this case, nothing is too trivial to have significance. Octavia is neck deep in this matter, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean she is playing the same game as her husband.”
The Greek sighed. “Sometimes I wish I were a playwright. This has the dimensions of high tragedy and the complications of low farce.”
“Yes, well, that’s politics for you,” I muttered, half distracted. We were getting near the Forum, and I drew a curtain aside to see what was ahead. There was certainly a lot of noise coming from that direction.
We had taken the most direct route from the ludus: across the Sublician Bridge and through the Forum Boarium, and along the Vicus Tuscus to where it crossed the Via Nova and ended between the Basilica Sempronia and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, near the western end of the Forum. Ahead and to our left I could see the greatest concentration of the crowd, and from that direction came the greatest noise.
“Is that the lady?” Asklepiodes asked.
“The one and only Fulvia,” I said with a sinking heart.
She was on the Rostra, a tiny form still clad in black, gesturing wildly. I saw white-clad men, most likely senators, trying to scale the platform, but other men were pushing them back. I wondered who, with the old gangs broken up, had the insolence to manhandle the Senate.
“I need to get closer,” I said.
“Get us up to the Rostra, lads!” Asklepiodes cried.
“Whatever you say, Doctor!” yelled one. “Let’s go!” And in a blur of flying fists and elbows, the crowd parted magically before us. Within what seemed like only seconds, we were before the railing of the Rostra, its age-darkened ships’ rams looming ominously above. In front and to both sides stood a cluster of senators, lictors, and other attendants trying to shout down the furious woman who harangued the mob from above. I now saw that the men who controlled access to the speaker’s platform wore military belts and boots.
“Oh, no!” I cried, appalled. “She’s got Caesar’s soldiers supporting her and laying hands on the Senate!”
Up on the platform, Fulvia was putting on an amazing show. Her pale hair streamed wildly, tears flowed down her swollen cheeks, her face was scarlet with rage, her mouth was drawn into a long, vertical rectangle, like that on a tragic mask. Also, her sheer, black clothing was in such disarray that she was in imminent danger of losing the upper half entirely.
“Slaves! Cowards! Spineless slugs!” she screamed. “How can you call yourselves Romans? They came to slaughter the man who would be your tribune! They feared him because they knew he would be the defender of your liberties! They fell upon him and now he lies at death’s door because he wanted to be your champion! How can you allow them to live?”
Cato made his way to the litter. Hermes and I stood outside, Asklepiodes remained within. The gladiators stood around us in a protective circle. They made way for Cato’s senatorial insignia.
“Quite a show, eh, Decius?” he said disgustedly. “Just when we had the City about cleaned up, this had to happen.”
“Does anybody know what’s going on?” I asked him.
“Just that Curio’s been seriously wounded. That wild woman got up on the Rostra and started screeching less than an hour ago. A pack of Caesar’s boys were here in the Forum, and they appointed themselves her bodyguard because Caesar’s told them Curio is his man and they were to vote for him. Now she has them so wrought up they’re putting violent hands on senators and lictors who are trying to silence her. How are we going to get this ugly mob calmed down?”
I looked all about and thought fast. Fortunately, thinking fast was one of my specialties. “Where are the consuls?”
“Nowhere to be found, naturally,” Cato said.
“I see a cluster of twelve lictors over there,” I said, pointing toward the southern end of the Rostra. “Are they Pompey’s?” Only consuls and proconsuls were entitled to twelve lictors.
“Yes, he got here a few minutes ago.”
“Good. The crowd will quiet down enough to listen to him. Tell him to call attention to me—send his lictors to arrest me or something. I think I can get them calmed.”
Cato rushed off in the direction of the lictors. I hoped Pompey would move quickly, because Fulvia was reaching the flamboyant climax of her oration.
“Romans! Look at me!” Here she seized the neckline of her sheer, black gown and ripped downward. The flimsy cloth shredded away from her and left her nude from the waist up. The shouting died down to a murmur, punctuated by groans and a few low whistles. My own jaw dropped along with the rest. This was a spectacle worthy of traveling a long way to see. She began to beat with her tiny fists against her by no means tiny breasts.
“Do you not know who your enemies are? These cruel and selfish aristocrats murdered your greatest defenders, the brothers Gracchi! Caius Gracchus was my own grandfather!” Like many another good rabble-rouser, she spoke of the aristocrats as if she weren’t one herself.
“They murdered my husband! Milo and his gang, protected by their friends in the Senate, slew my darling Clodius, who championed you like a god! Yet Milo lives! His followers slunk from the city like chastised children instead of being hurled from the Tarpeian Rock!” Here she swung her arm to point at that prominence atop the Capitol, throwing her own prominences into bold relief. “They walked away alive, and you did nothing! And you call yourselves Romans!” Her face flushed so dark I expected her to go into seizures.
“Now,” she went on, “they have struck down my betrothed, as if they must widow me twice! How long will you allow your champions to be murdered, Romans? How long before you see who your enemy is and burn this corrupt city to ashes? Tear down this rotten sink of murder and greed and plow up the ground and sow it with salt so that nothing will grow here again, as my great grandfather did to Carthage back when there were men in Rome!”
Now I could understand how she had induced Clodius’s supporters into using the Curia for his funeral pyre. I was about ready to torch a temple for her myself. Actually, it was her great-great-grandfather’s adopted son who wrecked Carthage so thoroughly, but she wasn’t going to pass up a chance for a fine rhetorical flourish over a carping detail like that.
The crowd was about to go into full roar once more when Pompey ascended the steps at the north side of the Rostra, alone, not even a single lictor with him. The soldiers at the top of the steps looked at one another, suddenly uncertain what to do. Tossing an ordinary senator off the platform was one thing. Laying hands on Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was quite another. He stopped near the top and jabbed a finger toward Fulvia.
“Get down from there, you shameless, indecent woman! I’ll not have—” Then he pretended to catch sight of me for the first time. His eyes went wide and his scandalized expression gave way to one of rage. The change of expression was broad and obvious, just as we were all taught to do in the schools of rhetoric. His accusing finger swung, slowly and deliberately, toward me. Just as he planned it, every gaze in the Forum swung away from Fulvia and toward me.
“Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger!” he shouted, that parade-ground voice echoing back from every public building for a quarter mile in all directions. “What do you mean coming to this place with a pack of killers? I expelled all such gangs from the City and forbade them to return upon pain of death! Answer me if you value your life!” The silence in the Forum was now total. Even Fulvia looked stunned, about to collapse from her excess of passion.
“Give me a boost, boys,” I said quietly. Two of the gladiators stooped, grasped me about the knees and raised me to their shoulders as easily as lifting a wineskin. With my feet planted firmly on their brawny shoulders, I made a
rhetorical gesture as broad as his own, easily visible in the farthest reaches of the Forum, one arm extended, the other hand clasped to my breast, fingers spread, as if I were clutching a heart stirred to the highest pitch by the terrible events of the moment.
“Proconsul!” I cried, pitching my voice slightly lower than his famous bellow. “Word came to me that my good friend, Scribonius Curio, had been attacked and lay terribly wounded! Frantic with concern, I ran to the ludus of Statilius Taurus, there to summon the one man who can save our beloved future tribune. In this litter—” here I gestured gracefully toward the little conveyance below me—“is the great Asklepiodes, acknowledged from here to Alexandria as the foremost expert in the world on the subject of wounds made with weapons! These men are no criminal gang, Proconsul. They are his escort, come hither at peril of your wrath to speed the great physician’s way to the side of the wounded Curio. Every man of them owes his life to Asklepiodes, who can cure wounds lesser physicians would give up as hopeless!”
The gladiators began to tug their tunics up and down and sideways to show off for general admiration the terrible scars of the numerous wounds Asklepiodes had stitched up for them. People began edging closer for a better look.
“Splendid, Metellus!” Pompey shouted. “I forgive them their intrusion just so they leave as soon as their duty is done.
Citizens!” He threw wide his arms. “Stand not in the way of the great physician! He must fly at once to the side of Curio!”
The crowd began to mill about uncertainly. Most of them had no idea which direction the litter needed to go so they couldn’t very well get out of its way. For the moment their attention was off Fulvia.
“Put me down,” I ordered.
Cato hustled back. “The wretch is at Fulvia’s house. As likely a place as any to be assaulted.”
I leaned into the litter. “That’s where Clodius used to live. You know how to get there, don’t you?”
SPQR X: A Point of Law Page 17