A Murder on the Appian Way

by Steven Saylor

“Were these prisoners wounded? Were they bloody?”

  He looked puzzled. “Now that you ask me, no, I don’t think they were.”

  I shook my head. According to Fulvia, at least half of Clodius’s men had scattered and fled into the woods early in the battle—these were the few survivors who had eventually come back to her with fragmentary reports of the disaster—and all the rest had died, either along the road or protecting Clodius at the inn. According to her, no one in Clodius’s entourage was missing or unaccounted for. Who then were these prisoners the priest spoke of? And if Senator Tedius had come along in his litter before Milo’s men departed, not after, how was it that when the innkeeper’s wife ventured to look out the window after the battle, she saw only Senator Tedius and his daughter standing over Clodius with their retinue, and no sign of Milo’s men? The precise sequence of events was suddenly muddled in my mind. What exactly had the innkeeper’s wife seen with her own eyes? Her sister-in-law was only a secondhand witness, and might have inadvertently changed some detail or left something out. If only the woman was not so far away, in Rhegium …

  “Well, this is the spot!” announced the priest, a little out of breath from the uphill climb. “There’s the shrine of the Good Goddess, up ahead on the right.” He pointed to a miniature temple with a round roof just off the road, ringed by oak trees. “This is where the battle started. Clodius and his men were coming down the hill, and Milo and his men were heading up.”

  Was that how it had happened—two parties simply happened to pass on the road and somehow came to blows? Or had there in fact been an ambush, no matter how ill conceived on the part of Clodius and his smaller force? The spot was perfect for it; the trees were dense enough on either side to provide hiding places and the slope of the land would have favored an attacker coming from above.

  But who, excepting the parties involved, had actually witnessed the event?

  “Felicia!” cried the priest to a tall, lithe figure in a white gown who had stepped out of the woods surrounding the shrine of the Good Goddess. As she approached us she raised her hand in greeting and smiled, and I saw that she was older than I had first thought. There was a luminous quality about her pale face and a gracefulness in her step that at a distance projected the illusion of youth. Clearly, she had once been a stunningly beautiful woman. She was still very pleasing to look at.

  The priest stepped toward her and put his hands on his hips. “Kindly wait your turn, Felicia. I am escorting these men for the moment.”

  “Of course, of course!” She mocked him by making a pretense of being intimidated, fluttering her eyelashes and wringing her hands. “I know the rules. You get first chance at the travelers from the north, I get first chance at the ones from the south.”

  “Besides, Felicia, no one here can go into your shrine. All men!”

  “So I see!” She appraised each of us in turn, smiling at Eco, letting her eyes linger on Davus, looking at me last.

  “Oh, all right, Felicia, they’re yours. I have to get back to the altar anyway.” The priest looked up at me and unabashedly stuck out his empty palm.

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “The gratuity—for the upkeep of Jupiter’s altar.” I nodded to Eco, who produced a sum from his purse that was as usual a little too stingy. I frowned, and he tipped out another coin. I nodded, took the money and dropped it into the priest’s open palm, where it vanished from sight with almost magical speed.

  The priest, without another word, did the same.

  17

  “So, Felicia,” I said, finding it impossible not to return the woman’s beaming smile, “you must be the attendant at the shrine of the Good Goddess.”

  “I see to the needs of the female travelers who wish to stop and worship here, yes.”

  “For a gratuity.”

  “Only an impious mortal expects to get something from the gods in return for nothing.”

  I nodded. “You and your brother seem to have made quite a business of showing the local sights to visitors.”

  “People want to know what happened here on the Appian Way.”

  “Indeed they do.”

  “But how did you know that the two of us are brother and sister? Did Felix tell you?”

  I had referred to the priest as her brother in a religious sense, not suspecting they were actually kin. It was a family business, then, attending to the shrines and profiting from the tourists on this stretch of the Appian Way. There seemed to be a bit of sibling rivalry as well.

  “I suppose my brother also told you that I used to be a temple prostitute in the service of Isis in my younger days,” Felicia said. Not waiting for an answer, she raised her chin, adding even more height to her tall, narrow figure. “Yes, it’s true. I was a temple prostitute. But today I serve only Fauna, the Good Goddess.” She seemed quite proud of both facts.

  “Fascinating,” I said. “And did you happen to be on duty here that day?”

  “The day of the battle? Oh, yes.”

  “And did you see what happened?”

  “Oh, yes!” It seemed to me that she kept her eyes unnaturally wide open, as people do when fighting off sleep or trying to frighten small children. She pointed toward Bovillae. “Milo’s party came up the hill from Bovillae—such a lot of them!”

  I raised an eyebrow. “All hairdressers and cosmeticians, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Not at all. Well, yes, there did seem to be a number of bath and bedchamber slaves—you should have heard the way they squealed when the fighting began! But there were plenty of armed men as well. In front, behind, all up and down the sides. Like a little army marching off to battle.”

  “Where was Milo?”

  “Near the front of the procession, in a carriage with his wife.”

  “Did they stop here?”

  “At the shrine? No. Fausta Cornelia never stopped here.”

  “Really? I would assume that Sulla’s daughter, a woman of such high standing, must play a leading role in the cult of the Good Goddess.”

  “In Rome, perhaps. But I find that most of the women who stop at this shrine are from smaller towns and more humble circumstances. Many of the women from the city seem to consider themselves a bit above stopping at such a humble place to pay their respects to the goddess. They had rather attend to her in more lavish surroundings, I suppose.”

  “That hardly seems pious of them.”

  “I make no judgment.” Her smile never wavered. Her eyes never narrowed. “But you wanted to know about the skirmish. Well, it began right there, directly in front of the shrine. I was sitting on the steps, warming myself in a bit of sunshine. I saw the whole thing.”

  “What hour was this?”

  “About the ninth hour.”

  So far, every witness had confirmed Fulvia’s account and refuted Milo, who placed the skirmish two hours later. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. There’s a sundial in the glade behind the shrine. I’d looked at it not long before.”

  “How did the skirmish begin?”

  “Milo and his company were coming up the hill, Clodius and his men were coming down the hill.”

  “Clodius was out on the open road, then? He didn’t suddenly appear out of the woods?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t lay an ambush?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Was he on horseback?”

  “Yes. So were a couple of his companions. The rest were on foot.”

  “Were there any women or children with him?”

  “No. All grown men.”

  “How many?”

  “About twenty or twenty-five.”

  “Armed?”

  “They looked like a group of trained fighters, if that’s what you mean. You seem to be more curious about such details than most of the travelers I’ve talked to.”

  “Do I?” I studied the empty stretch of road. “So, when the two parties met, did they simply begin fighting?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.”


  “Did they exchange insults?”

  “No, not at first. Quite the opposite, in fact. As soon as the two parties caught sight of each other, everyone fell silent. They all stiffened a bit. I could see the reaction as it moved through the two groups, like twin ripples from the meeting point. Necks stiff, jaws clenched, eyes set straight ahead—posturing, the way men do around each other. There was a bit of confusion as they passed. The road is wide, but both parties had to draw in and stretch out a bit to make room. Clodius’s men became more spread out than Milo’s. There was some jostling even so, and some grumbling. There was a tension in the air that set my teeth on edge—how can I explain it?—like raking your fingernails across a slate tile. I remember gasping suddenly and realizing that I’d been holding my breath, watching and waiting for something dreadful to happen.

  “While the two groups were still passing each other, Clodius and his friends on horseback drew away from the road, just in front of where I was sitting, letting their men go ahead of them. Milo and his wife proceeded up the hill in their carriage, getting farther and farther away. Finally the last of Milo’s party and the last of Clodius’s party passed one another, right in front of me. Clodius tugged at his reins and fell in behind his men. I drew a breath of relief. I whispered a prayer to the Good Goddess, thankful that nothing had happened after all. But Clodius couldn’t leave well enough alone. Some demon must have poked at him. He looked back and shouted something over his shoulder at the two gladiators at the rear of Milo’s train.”

  “Two gladiators?”

  “Yes, acting as a rear guard, I suppose. They’re famous, or so my brother says …”

  “Eudamus and Birria?”

  “Yes, those two.”

  “And what did Clodius say to them?”

  She blinked. “If I were still a temple prostitute and not an attendant of the Good Goddess, I would quote his exact words.”

  “A modest approximation, then?”

  “It was something like, ‘Why so glum-looking, Birria? Hasn’t Eudamus been letting you clean his sword often enough?’”

  “I see. Then what happened?”

  “The one called Birria spun around—lightning quick, like snapping your fingers—and threw his spear at Clodius. It happened so fast that I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t been looking straight at him. Clodius was still looking back, laughing at his own joke. The spear struck him very hard.”

  “Where?”

  She reached up to her shoulder. “Here, I think. I barely saw it strike—the spear flew faster than I could follow it, and struck so hard it knocked Clodius clear off his horse. Then there was a moment of total confusion—men shouting, turning about, bumping into each other. I got up from the steps and ran into the shrine, but I kept watching as best I could from the shadows. It all happened very quickly. I’d never seen a battle before. I suppose all battles must look like that—a bunch of men running around swinging their weapons at each other, shouting at the top of their lungs. It all looked rather ridiculous, to tell you the truth, and yet at the same time rather awesome. The only thing I could think of was when I was very young and I used to watch strangers copulating in the shadows of the Temple of Isis. It was hard not to laugh, but at the same time there was something frightening about it. Fascinating, revolting and absurd all at once.”

  “What happened to Clodius?”

  “Someone pulled the spear from his shoulder and he managed to get to his feet. Some of Milo’s men made a charge—”

  “Where was Milo?”

  She thought for a moment. “Nowhere to be seen, at least not yet.”

  “Then from what you say, the battle began spontaneously and without Milo’s knowledge, while he was away at the head of the entourage. The parties met by chance and passed each other in silence, without incident until Clodius hurled a parting insult and Birria hurled a spear back at him on an impulse.”

  Felicia nodded agreement, with the same imperturbable smile and the same glassy look in her eyes. Was that all there was to the incident?

  “Still, Papa, a citizen is responsible for his slaves’ behavior,” Eco reminded me. “Milo might not have countenanced Birria’s crime, but he was to some degree legally culpable.”

  “And a man is also responsible for any false tales he puts forward,” I said, thinking of the very different but no less vivid account of the same incident that Milo had delivered at Caelius’s contio. So far, everything Felicia had told me agreed with Fulvia’s version of the incident, gleaned from the survivors among Clodius’s party, except that Fulvia had omitted Clodius’s parting insult; without that detail, Birria’s attack appeared entirely unprovoked, perhaps even premeditated. But the detail of the insult seemed genuine enough, and it was hard to imagine that Felicia was mistaken or lying. It was understandable that Fulvia might have omitted a fact that impugned her husband’s memory. Her sources might have withheld it from her, or perhaps might not have heard the insult themselves. But Milo’s elaborate tale of a cold-blooded ambush appeared to be a complete fabrication. “How did the battle proceed?”

  “Badly, for Clodius and his men,” said Felicia. “They were greatly outnumbered, of course. A few of them were killed right away. A number of them ran off into the woods, with Milo’s men chasing after them. One of Clodius’s friends on horseback shouted that he would go for help and headed up the hill, trying to gallop through Milo’s ranks. Headed back to Clodius’s villa, I suppose.”

  “Did he make it through?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

  “And Clodius’s other friend on horseback?”

  “I think he must have been knocked off his horse, because the next time I looked, all of Clodius’s men—those who were still with him and standing—were on foot. The horses were gone.”

  “Which explains why Clodius made his retreat on foot.”

  “And why he headed down to Bovillae for safety,” said Eco. “Milo’s men blocked the way back to his villa. It was either retreat to the inn or make a stand in the road.”

  “And Clodius was already badly wounded,” I said. “Your brother says he was stumbling and had to be helped. Yet he reached the inn well ahead of his pursuers. How did he get such a head start, I wonder?”

  “Milo’s men didn’t chase after him right away,” said Felicia. “They seemed uncertain whether or not to follow. They looked like hounds, running back and forth, unable to pick up a scent. Until Milo arrived.”

  “And then?”

  “Milo was furious. He stamped his feet, shook his fists, stood right in Birria’s face and screamed at him—like some fool taunting a wild bear. I cringed to see it. But then Milo calmed down and held a sort of council, conferring with some of his men in a circle. They seemed to come to a decision, and Milo dispatched Birria and Eudamus and large party of men in the direction of Bovillae. The rest closed ranks around Milo. He drew his sword and kept peering into the woods.

  “I grew frightened myself. Some of Clodius’s men had fled into the woods, with Milo’s men after them; I worried that they might emerge in the glade behind the shrine, or try to take refuge in the shrine itself. So I stayed quiet and hid among the shadows. No one noticed me.”

  “When did Senator Tedius pass by?” I said.

  “That was the next thing that happened. A fancy litter came down the hill with a little retinue. I knew who it was, because Senator Tedius’s daughter often stops here at the shrine.”

  “Unlike Fausta Cornelia?”

  “Tedia is a very old-fashioned woman. Very pious, very virtuous. Not proud or vain, in the way that so many younger women of high birth are these days. But she didn’t come into the shrine that day. When Milo’s men stopped the litter, she stayed inside. Tedius got out and talked to Milo for a while. From the way he gestured, I assumed that Milo was trying to persuade him to turn back. But the senator is a stubborn man. He insisted on proceeding, got back into the litter and set off again down the hill toward Bovillae. More time passed, I don’t know
how long. Milo paced and fretted. Fausta Cornelia finally got out of the carriage and began to dog his steps. They had some sort of argument, but kept their voices low. Finally Eudamus and Birria came back, bringing the prisoners with them.”

  “Prisoners …” I shook my head. “Your brother mentioned them. But who could they have been?”

  “Some of Clodius’s men?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Because, I thought, Fulvia told me specifically that none of her husband’s men had been missing. Felicia looked at me shrewdly, or as shrewdly as anyone could with those glassy eyes and that unwavering smile. “You seem to know a lot already about what happened that day.”

  “And you seem to have already told this story a number of times before.”

  She shrugged. “The Appian Way is a busy road, even in these troubled times. And people are naturally curious.”

  “Do you tell what you saw to anyone who happens to pass by?”

  “So long as they donate something to the shrine. I’ve never been one to withhold favors, either in my old profession or my new one.”

  I looked at her and shook my head. I found little to admire in her, but I saw nothing to despise either. When I considered the danger into which she had unwittingly, even stupidly placed herself, merely for the sake of taking in a few coins from strangers, my blood ran cold. “Felicia, have you any idea of the risk you’ve taken? I’m amazed that you’re still alive, you and your brother both.”

  Her smile wavered. Her eyes flickered, as if just beginning to focus. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have no idea of the magnitude of what you saw that day? You act as if it were merely a curiosity, an amusing story to tell to travelers for profit. But at this very moment, up in Rome, a very powerful, very ruthless man is struggling for his survival. Milo is telling everyone that he was ambushed by Clodius that day.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I don’t care what the man says. I know what I saw, and the things I told you—”

  “If produced in a court of law, could send Milo into exile, discredit his followers and cause enormous embarrassment to some of the most powerful men in Rome. Men who have spies everywhere, and assassins, and whole stables full of fellows like Eudamus and Birria. Milo’s agents may have been here already, snooping about. If they managed to pass by you and your brother, it can only be because the gods made them look the other way. Or have you already spoken to them, as freely as you’ve spoken to me? They may already know who you are and what you’ve been telling. In that case only their incompetence can explain that fact that you’re still alive to tell the tale to me. Or is it your lemur I’m speaking to?”