I sighed. One more powerful man in Rome disliked me. I would just have to live with it. I had borne up beneath such burdens before. I walked out into the sunlight and went to provoke somebody else. Back across the Forum and past the Circus Maximus and up the slope of the Aventine to the Temple of Ceres. The elderly freedman and the slave boy I had encountered two days before were still there, but there were no aediles present. I asked after Murena, fearing that he would still be home in bed, nursing an aching head like much of the City.
“The aedile Caius Licinius Murena,” the freedman said importantly, “is in the jeweler’s market this morning.”
So I went to find him. Outside, on the temple steps, I paused in case the slave boy should run out with more information to sell. After a reasonable interval I set off for another trudge: back past the circus, back past the cattle market, and through the Forum. No matter how I tried to plan, I always seemed to be retracing my steps.
The jeweler’s market sold a great deal more than jewelry, but all of the wares displayed there were expensive luxury goods: silks, perfumes, rare vases, furniture of exquisite workmanship, and a great many other things I couldn’t afford. There the merchants did not operate from tiny booths and tents that they set up and took down every day. The jeweler’s market was a spacious, shady portico where the dealers could display their wares to wealthy patrons in gracious ease. No raucous-voiced vendors cried their wares, and even the most elegant ladies could descend from their litters and browse through the great arcade without being jostled or forced into proximity with the unwashed. The splendid portico was owned by the state, and the merchants secured their enviable accommodations through payment of regular fees, some small part of which usually stuck to aedilician fingers.
Murena was easy to spot in the rather thin crowd that morning. As a curule aedile he was entitled to wear the purple-bordered toga, and when I came upon him he was speaking with a Syrian who displayed a dazzling assortment of golden chains, from hair-thin specimens for a lady’s neck to massive links suitable for shackling a captive king. Doubtless, I thought, Murena was squeezing out a few more bribes before having to fold up his curule chair and doff his toga praetexta.
“May I have a moment of your time, Aedile?” I asked. He turned, smiling. Murena was a man a few years older than I, with an engagingly ugly face. “How may I help you, Senator?”
I went through the usual introduction and explained the bare bones of my mission. “In my inquiries concerning possible vendors of poison I came across the name of Harmodia, a Marsian woman who had a stall beneath the arches of the Circus Flaminius. She was discovered on the morning of the ninth of November, murdered. A watchman from the circus reported the killing at the Temple of Ceres, and you went out to investigate. Upon your return you dictated a report to a secretary and it was filed. Is this correct so far?”
“I remember the incident. Yes, you are correct so far as my part in it goes. Why is the woman significant?”
“I have strong evidence that the woman sold the poison used in the murder I am investigating, and I believe she was killed to silence her.”
“Those people are notorious. The City would be improved if they were all driven off.”
“Perhaps so. Now,” I went on, getting to the heart of the matter, “about two or three days after the murder, you sent a slave to the Temple of Ceres to fetch your report of the woman’s death for a presentation to the praetor urbanus, is this correct?”
Murena frowned. “No, I made no such report.”
“You didn’t?” Another unexpected twist in a case already full of them.
“No, it was the last full month of the year for official business and the courts were extremely busy. Nobody was interested in a dead woman from the mountains.”
“And yet the report is missing.”
“Then it was misfiled, as often happens at the temple, or else the slave picked up the wrong report, as also happens rather commonly.”
“Possibly. Could you give me the gist of your report? It might have some bearing not only upon the murder but upon the reason for the report’s disappearance.”
“Inefficiency requires no reason, Senator Metellus,” he pointed out.
“Profoundly put. But, if you will humor me …”
“Very well. Let me see …” He concentrated for a while. “This was several weeks ago, and the incident was a trifling one, so please bear with me if my memory lacks its usual keenness.”
“Quite understandable. A mere murder, after all.” It was a pretty fair assessment of a homicide in Rome in those days, at least when the victim was a person of no importance. At the moment, though, I could feel little sorrow over the death of Harmodia. She was a seller of poisons. Ariston had been equally despicable. As far as I was concerned, their murders were just an impediment to my investigation. As, of course, they were intended to be.
“The murder was reported by one Urgulus …”
“I have spoken with him,” I said.
“Then you know the circumstances under which she was found and I was summoned. I went to the Flaminius and found the body of a fairly stout woman in her thirties or forties lying in a large pool of blood. The cause of death was a deep knife wound to the throat, nearly severing the head. Questioning revealed no witnesses to the deed, which had occurred several hours before, judging by the condition of the body.”
“Were there any other wounds?” I asked. “Urgulus was unsure.”
“While I was asking questions, the Marsian women prepared her for transport to her home for burial. They took off her bloody gown, washed her body, and wrapped her in a shroud. I saw no other wounds, but I suppose if she’d been knocked on the back of the head with a club there might have been no obvious sign of it.”
“No evidence found nearby? The murder weapon, that sort of thing?”
“In that district? Thieves would have stolen the blood if they could have gotten anything for it.”
“That is so. Anything else?”
He thought for a moment. “No, that is what I reported. As I said, there was very little to report. When I went to court that morning I made a brief mention of it for the morning report.”
“Yes, I found that at the tabularium. Tell me, Caius Licinius, weren’t you in Gaul a few years back?”
“Yes, it was four years ago, when Cicero and Antonius were consuls. I was legate to my brother, Lucius. I was left in charge when he returned to Rome for the elections. Why, were you there at the time?”
“No, it’s just that Gaul is on everybodies’ minds these days.”
“It may be on everybodies’ minds, but it’s in Caesar’s hands now, though he may come to regret that, and serve him right.”
“You favor Pompey then?”
“Pompey!” he expressed utter scorn. “Pompey is a jumped-up nobody, who earned his reputation over the bodies of better men. And before you ask, Crassus is a fat sack of money and wind who once, with help, beat an army of slaves. Is that satisfactory?”
“Eminently.”
“Those men want to be kings. We threw out our foreign kings more than four hundred years ago. Why should we want a home-grown variety?”
“You are a man after my own heart,” I told him. Indeed he was, if his sentiments were sincere. I took my leave of him and walked away, pondering. He was not what I had expected, but it is always foolish to expect people to fall into one’s preconceived notions. He certainly seemed plausible, even likable. But Rome was full of plausible, likable villains.
Flavius had been more the sort of man I expected to find involved in this: the kind of brutally aggressive tribune who made the lives of the senior magistrates such a torment. That made me want to believe that he was a part of the plot to poison Celer, and that, too, was a foolish line of thought. The will to believe is mankind’s greatest source of error. A philosopher told me that once.
I felt that I had come to a dead end and had learned all I was going to by asking questions. The year was dwindling,
and I had satisfied no one. All I had really determined was that Celer had indeed been poisoned. Clodia’s guilt or innocence was unproven. Clodius would be growing impatient. So would the leaders of my family. Gaul was looking better all the time.
“Up so early?” A small, veiled figure stood at my side.
“Julia! I’ll have you know I was up before dawn … well, not long after dawn, anyway, and working diligently. How did you get away from Aurelia?”
“Grandmother is never quite well on the day after Saturnalia. Waiting on slaves upsets her.”
“How very un-Roman. I expect greater respect for our traditions from our distinguished matrons.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her that. Where can we talk?”
“There is no shortage of places. The Forum isn’t exactly thronged this morning.”
We ended up on the portico of the beautiful little Temple of Venus on the Via Sacra near the Temple of Janus. Like that of Vesta, Venus’s temple was round, in the shape of the huts in which our ancestors had lived. The place was deserted, for the goddess had no rites at that time of year. The portico was newer than the rest of the building and featured a long bench against the wall of the temple, where citizens could sit and enjoy the shade on hot days, which are numerous in Rome.
From where we sat, we could see the doors of the Temple of Janus. We could see one set of doors, I should say, for that temple has doors at each end. The doors were open, as usual. They were only closed in times of peace, when Roman soldiers were nowhere engaged in hostilities. This is to say that they were never closed.
“Now tell me what you’ve been up to,” Julia said. It seemed to me that she was growing all too accustomed to making such demands.
“The hours since we parted yesterday evening have been eventful and more than a little puzzling,” I informed her.
“Tell me. I can probably make more sense of it than you.”
I began with the meeting in my father’s house after the slave banquet. Julia frowned as I described the proceedings.
“You mean they treated that … that atrocity as if it were just another little political embarrassment?”
“These men look at everything that way,” I affirmed.
“But my uncle is pontifex maximus! How can he treat this flouting of our sacred laws so lightly?”
“My dear, the supreme pontificate has become just another political office. Caius Julius is widely known to have secured it through a campaign of bribery such as has seldom been seen in Rome, even in this decadent era.”
“I cannot believe that. But I confess to being shocked at his cavalier treatment of the matter. It must be that the Gaulish campaign weighs so heavily on his mind. I know what a burden it is, spending as much time in his house as I do. Lately he has been agitated and busy from long before dawn to long after dark. He just calls for lamps and keeps on working, interviewing prospective officers, dispatching letters all over … he has become distracted with work.”
“I can imagine the shock,” I said. Caesar had long been famed for his indolence. The sight of him actually working had to be a worthy spectacle. “It seems that I may be one of those lucky men who shall go out and win undying glory for him.”
“What?” Now she had to hear all about that.
“It’s true. He asked for my services and my father thinks it’s a good idea and now I’m cornered. I may spend the next few years among the barbarians, constantly under attack and eating the worst food in the world.”
“This is disturbing news,” she said. From somewhere within her mantle she produced a palm frond and fanned herself with it. In December. She had probably overdone it in disguising herself with cloaks and veils. “But surely he will assign you to administrative duties … embassies, payrolls, that sort of thing.”
“He’ll have quaestors for the payrolls,” I told her, “and embassy or envoy duty can be dangerous in that part of the world. Nations wishing to join a rebellion usually declare their loyalty by killing their Roman ambassadors. Envoys who deliver terms the Gauls don’t like are often slaughtered. The Germans are rumored to be even worse.”
“Well, I am certain that my uncle will keep you well away from danger. Your reputation has never been that of a soldier, after all.”
“I am touched by your faith.”
“Anyway, that is next year. What happened after the conference?” This time she got the story of my flight from my father’s house and the little battle near my house.
“It’s a good thing Milo assigned you such capable men,” she commented.
“I did pretty well for myself,” I said. “I settled for one and was about…”
“You would have been killed had you been alone,” she said flatly. “Do you think the men were Clodia’s?”
“No, and that is a part of all the things that have bothered me about this case. It’s not Clodia’s style.”
“Have you forgotten?” she said crossly. “I told you that she might do just such a thing to divert attention from herself.”
“I remember quite well. No, it’s the quality of the men. I’ve been in Clodia’s house quite a bit”—I caught her look and added hastily—”in the line of duty, of course. Everything Clodia owns, buys, hires, or in any way whatever associates with, is first class. Her clothes, her furniture, her collection of art, even her slaves all are of the very highest quality.”
“I’d like to get a look at her house some time,” Julia said wistfully.
“But Milo’s thugs said that the attackers were very inferior fighters from an inferior school. Even allowing for the customary school rivalry, they did seem less than adept. They were not very pretty either. If Clodia had hired assassins, she would have hired only the best.”
“No pursuit is so low that good taste cannot be observed,” Julia said. “I still think you’re trying to find her innocent in spite of all evidence.”
“Then listen to this.” I told her about the interview with Narcissus. She was enthralled by, of all things, Asklepiodes’s diagnosis of the injury caused by the falling roof tile.
“And he can actually open up a man’s head and heal so terrible an injury!” she said, dropping her fan and clasping her hands in delight. “Such a skill must truly be a gift from the gods.”
“Well, if anyone can do it, it must be Asklepiodes. Now pay attention. That is nothing.”
“Nothing!” she said before I could continue. “All you men spend your days scheming about how to injure people and you idolize the worst butchers, but you think it is nothing that someone can draw an injured man back from death like that!”
“I don’t go around injuring people,” I protested. “And I don’t admire people who do. Besides, we don’t know that he will pull through. Marcus Celsius may have the Styx lapping about his ankles this very moment.” How had we gotten off onto this? “Enough. Let me tell you about a less admirable physician.”
Julia listened open-mouthed as I described the activities of the late Ariston of Lycia.
“Oh, this is infamous!” she cried. “A physician, sworn to the gods by the oath of Hippocrates, deliberately poisoning his patients!”
“You think you’re shocked?” I said. “He was my family’s physician. Suppose I’d fallen ill?”
“Do you think you are important enough to poison?”
“Some people have deemed me quite worthy of homicide.”
“They might have stabbed you to death in the street, perhaps. That usually calls for a temporary exile. Poisoning brings a terrible punishment.”
“It is a puzzler, and that brings up another question. With all the suspicions about her, why would Clodia poison Celer? She had to know that she would be the most prominent suspect. If she, as you suggested, might wish to divert suspicion from herself, would she not have hired an assassin to strike him down in the city? Everyone would have automatically assumed that he had been killed by one of his multitude of political enemies.”
That gave her something to think about. “It does
confuse things.”
“So, having determined that the poison originated with Harmodia and that Ariston was the vector, as it were, by which it was transmitted to the victim, I have to sift through the rather numerous suspects to determine which one hired Ariston”.
“Must it be only one?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“As you’ve said, Celer had no dearth of enemies. Might Ariston not have shopped his services around to a number of them? He might have taken pay from more than one, and each would think that he was the only one who had hired Ariston.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, intrigued by the idea. “It would present some interesting judicial problems in assigning guilt, wouldn’t it? I mean, if it wasn’t, technically, a conspiracy, how would the courts go about punishing them? Give each a portion of a death sentence? Find extremely tiny islands for them all?”
“Rein in your imagination,” she said. “Probably only the saga would get the full sentence of the law; perhaps the Greek physician as well. Those who hired him might get off with exile, since they were probably of the nobility. They would at least be given the option of honorable suicide.”
“Probably,” I mused. Then I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work anyway. The more people Ariston involved, the greater the chance of discovery. He was a cautious man, and poison is notoriously the weapon of a coward. I can’t imagine him being so bold as to dupe a number of murderously inclined men that way. I think he sold his services to one of them and deemed himself safe.”
“It is worth considering. Anything else?”
“Yes, I conferred with Flavius, the fire-eating tribune of last year.” I told her of my interview. “He was everything I’d hoped: violent, abrasive, obnoxious, and a firm supporter of Pompey.”
“So what is wrong?”
“He’s too good to be true. Besides, everything about him proclaims a willingness, even an eagerness, to shed his enemy’s blood with his own hands. I just don’t think poison is his style, although Celer’s death was awfully convenient for him, coming when it did. His anger when I brought up the subject of poisoning was too convincing. If he’d been expecting the accusation, I doubt he’d have been able to summon up that extravagant facial color on cue.”
SPQR V: Saturnalia Page 20