A Murder on the Appian Way

by Steven Saylor

  Clodius had been stripped of his bloody garments and retained only a loincloth around his hips. The puncture at his shoulder and the wounds in his chest had been cleaned, but only to show them clearly; there was still plenty of gore and blood smeared across his pale, waxy flesh. His hair, I noticed, had been lovingly combed and untangled. It was pushed back from his face, as he had worn it in life, but a stray tendril had fallen forward over one eye. To look at his face alone, one might have thought that he was merely asleep and frowning because the hair was tickling him, and that he might at any moment reach up to push it away. To see him naked under the stars on such a cold night made me shiver.

  Around us men moaned, cursed, wept, stamped their feet, shook their fists, buried their faces in their hands. Another tremor of apprehension rippled through the crowd as Fulvia appeared on the steps.

  Her arms were crossed over her chest, her head bowed. Her long, dark hair hung straight down, merging with the long black line of her gown. Hands reached toward her from the crowd, but she seemed oblivious of these gestures of comfort. She stood for a long moment beside her husband’s body, staring at it. Then she lifted her face to the sky and let out a cry of anguish that turned my blood cold. It was like the cry of a wild beast rending the cold night air; if any still slept on the Palatine, surely it woke them. Fulvia tore at her hair, lifted her arms to heaven and threw herself across her husband’s body. Her nephew and Sextus Cloelius made a fumbling attempt to restrain her, then stepped back in awe as she shrieked and beat her fists against the bier. She framed the corpse’s face with trembling hands and pressed her face to her husband’s, covering his cold lips with a kiss.

  Around us the mob raged like churning water. I thought of what the tribune Sallust had said: No one controls such a mob; it takes on a will of its own. It can maim or kill a man without meaning to and for no purpose at all, crushing the life out of him or trampling him underfoot. I grabbed Eco and by some feat of will we managed to push our way back through the gate. The crowd that overflowed the courtyard now filled the street as far as the eye could see. All up and down the block, houses were lit up as brightly as day with anxious-looking guards posted on the roofs. I pressed on, forcing a way through the crowd while Eco and his bodyguards struggled to keep up.

  At last we passed beyond the edges of the crowd. I never slowed my gait until we rounded a corner and found ourselves on an empty, darkened street. I stopped to catch my breath, and Eco did the same. His hands were trembling. I realized that I was shaking, too.

  Hearing only my own breath and the pulse in my temples, I didn’t notice the approaching footsteps. But the bodyguards did. They stiffened and drew themselves around us. Men were coming up the darkened street, heading in the direction of Clodius’s house. As they passed, their leader signaled for them to stop. He peered at us in the dim starlight. His face was in shadow, but I could see that he had curly hair and a prominent nose, and a strong physique beneath his cloak. After a moment he stepped away from his bodyguards and approached us.

  “Do you come from Clodius’s house?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is it true, what they say?”

  “What do they say?”

  “That Clodius is dead.”

  “It’s true.”

  The man sighed. It was a quiet, gentle sigh, very different from the raging laments we had just left behind. “Poor Publius! It’s the end of him, then, for good or ill. All over.” He cocked his head. “Don’t I know you?”

  “Do you?”

  “I think so. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “Can you see in the dark, citizen?”

  “Well enough. And I never forget a voice.” He hummed to himself, then grunted. “You’re Meto’s father, aren’t you? And this is Meto’s brother, Eco.”

  “Yes.” I tried to get a better look at him. I could make out his rugged features—the strong brow, the flattened boxer’s nose—but I still didn’t recognize him.

  “You and I met last year,” he said, “briefly, when you came to visit Meto in Ravenna. I serve under Caesar, too.” He paused for a moment. When I gave no sign of remembering, he shrugged. “Well, then, what’s happening around the bend? That glow in the sky—not a house on fire?”

  “No. Just a great many torches.”

  “There’s a big crowd gathered at the house?”

  “Yes. They’ve come to see the body. His wife, Fulvia—”

  “Fulvia?” He spoke the name with an odd intensity, as if it had a secret meaning for him.

  “She grieves. You might be able to hear her from here.”

  He sighed again, a deep, rich sigh. “I suppose I should see for myself. Farewell, then, Gordianus. And you, Eco.” He rejoined his companions and moved swiftly on.

  “Farewell—” I said, still unable to remember his name. I turned to Eco.

  “As he said, Papa, we met him last year, at Caesar’s winter headquarters up in Ravenna. A bit modest, the way he says, ‘I serve under Caesar, too.’ One of the general’s top men, according to Meto. We were barely introduced. I’d forgotten about it myself. I’m surprised he remembers us. But then, the man’s a politician, of course. He’s been back in Rome for several months, running for office. I’ve seen him in the Forum, canvassing for votes. You must have seen him, too.”

  “Have I? What’s his name?”

  “Marc Antony.”

  3

  Over breakfast, Bethesda and Diana demanded to know everything. I tried to soften my description of Clodius’s corpse in deference to their appetites, but they insisted on all the gruesome details. The wrangling of the politicians was of less interest to them, but they listened attentively to my impressions of the famous house and its furnishings, and they were especially curious about Clodia.

  “Can it really be four years since the trial of Marcus Caelius?” Bethesda blew gently on a spoonful of hot farina.

  “Almost.”

  “And to think we haven’t had a glimpse of Clodia in all that time.”

  “Not surprising, really; we hardly move in the same exalted circles. But I don’t think anyone’s seen much of her. The trial took something out of her. She seemed a changed woman to me.”

  “Really? It sounds like she made quite a show of inviting you into the very heart of her brother’s grand house, as if she were doing you a great favor, making you feel privileged and special. She wants something.”

  “Really, Bethesda, the woman was distraught.”

  “Was she?”

  “I told you, she could hardly keep from weeping.”

  “To weep is one thing. To be distraught is another.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “No?” Bethesda sat back from the table. “Be careful of the farina, Diana. You’ll burn your tongue.”

  Diana nodded absently and gulped down a heaping spoonful.

  “What do you mean, Bethesda? About Clodia?”

  “Well, I have no doubt that she was very upset about her brother’s death. We all know how close they were, or at least the way people talked about them. And such a bloody death, from the way you describe his body. Awful!” She stirred her farina. Little puffs of steam rose from the bowl.

  “But?”

  Diana cleared her throat. “I think that what Mother is trying to say is—”

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Bethesda looked at Diana and they nodded in unison. “Her litter, her bodyguard—”

  “And using the main entrance. Yes.” Diana pursed her lips sagely.

  “What in Hades are the two of you talking about?”

  “Well—” Bethesda tried another spoonful of farina and finally deemed it cool enough. “From your description, it seems that there’s the main entrance to the house, and also the secluded little side door that you took.”

  “Yes …”

  “And they both end up in the same place.”

  “Yes, in the main vestibule.”

  “Well, I can’t speak for Clodia, but if I wer
e distraught, I should have no stomach for facing a huge crowd. I’d want to avoid that if I possibly could. And Clodia could have done so, quite easily, simply by entering through that side door. She could have avoided the crowd completely. Am I right? Her litter could have deposited her and Metella and her nephew Appius at the foot of the steps, and they could have gone up to the landing and into the house without anyone even knowing they’d arrived.”

  “I suppose so …”

  Diana picked up the thread from her mother. “Instead, she went through the thick of the crowd in that huge litter—the one with the red and white stripes that everyone knows is hers—with a veritable army of big redheaded gladiators.”

  Bethesda nodded. “Where everyone would be sure to notice her arrival.”

  “And talk about it long afterward,” said Diana.

  “What is your point?” I said, looking back and forth between them.

  “Well, Papa, only that grief was not the only thing on Clodia’s mind.”

  “Exactly,” said Bethesda. “Making an entrance—that was the point.”

  “Oh, really!” I shook my head. “If you’d been there, if you’d felt the mood of the place, the despair, the anguish—”

  “All the better to heighten the drama,” said Bethesda. “I don’t doubt Clodia’s grief. But you see, she must have considered the circumstances ahead of time. She realized that she wouldn’t be allowed to appear publicly alongside her brother’s body when it was shown to the crowd. That privilege was reserved for Fulvia.”

  “So Clodia made an impression in the only way she could—by making a grand entrance,” said Diana.

  “I see. You’re saying she wanted to upstage her sister-in-law.”

  “Not at all.” Bethesda frowned at my obtuseness. “She only wanted what was hers.”

  “To claim the portion of public grief that she feels belongs to her,” Diana explained.

  “I see,” I said, not at all certain that I did. “Well, speaking of doing things for show, of course I was quite struck by the inconsistency of Fulvia’s behavior—”

  “Inconsistency?” said Bethesda.

  “What do you mean, Papa?”

  “I told you how stiff she was in the inner room, how she showed virtually no emotion, even when she put Clodia in her place about cleaning the body. And then her hysterical shrieking in front of all those people when they showed Clodius to the mob!”

  “But where’s the inconsistency, Papa?” Diana looked at me curiously, as did her mother. I almost thought they were making fun of me.

  “It seems to me that a woman should grieve in private and show restraint in public, not the other way around,” I said.

  Bethesda and Diana looked at each other and wrinkled their brows. “What would be the point of that?” said Bethesda.

  “It’s not a matter of having a point—”

  “Husband!” Bethesda was shaking her head. “Of course Fulvia didn’t want to show her grief to you, a stranger, in the intimacy of her home, and especially not in front of Clodia. She comported herself with dignity—to make her mother proud, to show her little daughter how to be strong, to confound her weeping sister-in-law. And for the sake of her husband as well, since you Romans believe that the lemur of a dead man may linger for a while in the vicinity of its vacant corpse. So for you she put on her most dignified manner. But the crowd outside, that was a different matter. Fulvia wanted to stir them up, as much as she could, just as her husband had stirred them up so many times before. She could hardly do that by standing next to his bloody corpse and behaving like a statue, could she?”

  “Then you think her display of public grief was calculated and disingenuous?”

  “Calculated, most certainly. But disingenuous? Not at all. She simply chose the most suitable time and place to release the grief that was inside her all along.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure you’re making sense. I’d rather try to figure out what sort of schemes the politicians in the anteroom were up to.”

  Bethesda and Diana shrugged in unison to show that the subject bored them. “Politicians are usually too obvious to be very interesting,” said Bethesda. “Of course, it may be that I’ve misjudged Clodia and Fulvia. I wasn’t there to see with my own eyes. I can only go by what you’ve told me.”

  “Am I such an unreliable observer?” I raised an eyebrow. “Men do call me the Finder, you know.”

  “The thing is,” said Bethesda, oblivious to my point, “that one never quite knows what some people are really up to. Especially with a woman as complicated as Clodia, or Fulvia. How does one ever know what she really thinks, really feels? What she really wants?” Bethesda exchanged a thoughtful look with Diana. Simultaneously they lifted spoonfuls of porridge to their lips, then abruptly lowered them as Belbo came into the room.

  For many years the straw-haired giant of a fellow had been my private bodyguard, and had saved my life on more than one occasion. He was still as strong as an ox, but as lumbering as one, too; as loyal as a hound, but no longer fit for the chase. I still entrusted my life to him on a daily basis—I let him shave my neck—but I couldn’t rely on him to protect me from daggers in the Forum. What does one do with a loyal bodyguard who has outlasted his usefulness? Belbo could read only a little and do only the most rudimentary sums. He had no special skills at carpentry or gardening. Aside from performing an occasional feat of prodigious strength—toting a heavy sack of grain or lifting a massive wardrobe single-handed—he served me well enough as a doorkeeper, a job which chiefly required him to sit in a warm patch of sunlight in the atrium for most of the day. Lethargy suited his bovine nature and enhanced that equable temperament which strangers often mistook for stupidity. Belbo’s wits might be slow, but they were not dim. It was his way to smile at a joke after everyone else finished laughing. He seldom grew angry, even when provoked. He even more rarely showed fear. As he stepped into the dining room, however, his oxlike eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Belbo, what’s wrong?”

  “Out in the street, master. In front of the house. I think you’d better come see.”

  As soon as I stepped into the garden at the center of the house, I heard the noise carried on the open air—an indistinct mingling of cries and stamping feet. It sounded like a riot. I hurried through the garden and the atrium to the vestibule at the front of the house. Belbo pulled open the little sliding panel in the door and stepped aside to let me press my eye to the peephole.

  I saw a blur of movement from right to left—a mob rushing by, all dressed in black. I heard the roar of the crowd but couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Who are they, Belbo? What’s going on?” I stared through the peephole. Suddenly a figure broke away from the mob and ran directly up to the door. He put his mouth to the peephole and began screaming, “We’ll burn it down! Burn it down!” He banged his fists against the door. I jerked back, my heart pounding. Through the peephole I saw the man step back, his face frozen in a maniacal grin. Even with the door between us, I shivered. Then, just as suddenly as he had rushed up, the man turned and rushed away, disappearing into the mob.

  “What in Hades is going on?”

  “I wouldn’t advise going outside to find out,” said Belbo earnestly.

  I thought for a moment. “We’ll go up on the roof to have a look. Fetch the ladder, Belbo, and bring it to the garden!”

  A few moments later I found myself settled precariously on the slanting tiles along the front roof of my house. From here I had a view not only of the street below, but of the Forum beyond, with its temples and public spaces clustered close together in the valley between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills. Just below me the mob continued to surge through the street. Some of them ran straight on. Others broke away and took the shortcut called the Ramp that leads down to the Forum and empties into a narrow space between the House of the Vestals and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Some of the rioters carried sticks and clubs. A few brandished daggers, in open defiance of t
he law that forbids such weapons within the city. And though it was well after daybreak, a few carried torches. The flames whipped and snapped through the cold air.

  The mob eventually thinned, but was soon followed by an even larger, slower group of mourners. If it was a funeral procession, it was certainly a strange one. Where were the mummers doing parodies of the dead man to lighten the mood? Where were the wax effigies of the dead man’s ancestors, taken from their places of honor in his vestibule to witness his passage to join them on the other side? Where were the hired mourners, weeping and clawing at their tangled hair—indeed, where was there a woman to be seen?

  But there was music—mournful horns, wailing flutes and shivering tambourines, making a noise that set my teeth on edge. And there was a body—the corpse of Clodius carried upon a wooden bier festooned with black cloth. He was still naked except for a loincloth, and still filthy and smeared with dried blood.

  Some of the mourners broke away to take the Ramp down to the Forum, but the main procession with the corpse of Clodius kept to the street in front of my house, which runs along the crest of the Palatine. They were making a slow, deliberate circuit of the hill, I realized, passing by the houses of the rich and powerful in a somber procession, letting his friends and foes alike take a final look at the man who had caused so much disruption to the orderly life of the Republic.

  A few houses farther on, their course would take them directly past the front door of the man who had been Clodius’s most implacable enemy in the Senate and the courts. Clodius had made himself the champion of the lowly, of foot soldiers and freedmen; always against him there had been Cicero, the loyal spokesman for those who proudly called themselves the Best People. The funeral procession seemed orderly, but in the mob that preceded it I had seen men with daggers and torches. I held my breath, wondering what might happen when they reached Cicero’s house.