A Murder on the Appian Way

by Steven Saylor

  I took time to wander through the ruins for a while, tracing the demarcations of halls and cubicles where my presence would never have been allowed when the house stood, trying to imagine the sounds, smells and shadows of the place. The Virgo Maxima had mourned for its rustic charm, gone now forever. I felt her presence in that place, her brittle humor and forthright bitterness, far more than I felt the presence of the goddess, who no doubt had abandoned the desecrated place as surely as the missing head of her broken statue.

  Farther up the hill, through the trees, I could see the white columns and round roof of the circular Temple of Vesta—her original temple, as the Virgo Maxima had sternly reminded me. Even in daylight and at such a distance, the flame that burned eternally within could be seen by the lurid glow it cast on the smooth inner curves of the surrounding columns. The temple was unharmed and the land around it untouched. Even Clodius had not been impious enough to disturb the sacred flame.

  We returned to the path and moved on.

  The character of the woods began to change in some subtle way. Even my irreligious son sensed it, and mentioned it before I did. It may be as Eco suggested, that the trees outside a sacred grove, having been felled and allowed to grow back many times over many generations, establish a character somehow different from the trees within the sacred precinct, which have never been brought down by any mortal, and have never been scarred by any flame except fire sent from heaven by Jupiter himself. Such sacred woods are different in many small ways—the distance between the trees and the quality of the light that enters between them, their relative ages, the kind and amount of foliage at their feet. However it may be, after a time it was clear to us all, even to city-bound Davus, that we had entered a place that was special to the god.

  All the more shocking, then, was the sudden devastation we encountered in the very heart of those woods. We rounded a bend in the path, ducked beneath a low branch, and found ourselves in a clearing where only stumps remained. It was not a small clearing, but a whole hillside that had been denuded, as if some rapacious devourer of trees had gorged itself at this place.

  “This must be what the priest Felix was talking about,” I said.

  “ ‘They cut them down by tens and twenties,’ he said. But it looks even worse than that to me.” Eco shook his head. “What sort of woodsmen would inflict such a scar on a sacred grove?”

  “What sort of workers would carelessly knock over a statue of Vesta and leave the broken pieces where they lay? Clodius was known to recruit many of his free laborers from among the hungry rabble in Rome. Not a very skilled bunch, I imagine, but loyal.”

  “And not very pious, from the way they desecrated these holy places.”

  “Ah, but these places weren’t holy once Clodius was through with them. I’m sure he attended to all the legal formalities to see that the House of the Vestals and this section of the grove were duly desanctified before he plundered them.”

  “Surely a place either is holy or it isn’t, Papa.”

  I had to smile at my son’s sudden passion for things sacred. “Eco, you know better than that. A place is sacred or not depending on the judgment of the proper authorities. Some of those authorities no doubt are very sensitive to the mysterious signs of the gods, and as pious as men come. Others are not quite so pious, and more likely to see auspices in the glitter of a coin than in a flash of lightning. It is the Roman way, Eco, or at least it has been in my lifetime, and one of the reasons, I suppose, that so many men of your generation tend to have so little religious sentiment.” We kept walking steadily as we spoke, for I felt no desire to stop and contemplate the devastation.

  We came at last to the end of the clearing. The path took us into a dense stand of trees, where for a brief moment the sacred nature of the grove seemed to reassert itself amid the hushed shadows. But we had reached the farthest edge of the woods, and after only a few more steps we found ourselves again in bright sunlight. The band of woods we had just passed through had merely been left as a screen to hide the devastated hillside. We had arrived at Clodius’s Alban villa, the destination of the lumber from all those felled trees.

  Like his house in the city, Clodius’s villa still had an unfinished look—the decorative stonework in some places was only partly done, scaffolding clung to sections of the facade, and the landscaping was interrupted here and there by piles of crushed stone and stacks of brick and lumber. But the villa was built on such a massive scale that even in its rough-hewn state it was impressive. The grove of Jupiter awed a man in one way; a building such as this was awesome in its own right.

  The hillside on which it was situated was so steep that I would have thought it unsuitable for building. Clodius had given the architect Cyrus a difficult site on which to do his work, and Cyrus had responded with a building of daring innovation. No doubt the structure was fixed into the earth by some sort of stilts, but any such supports were concealed behind solid walls. Viewed from the side, the villa appeared to perch precariously on the hillside. On the downhill side, a long covered gallery ran the entire length of the topmost floor. Its seaward views must have rivaled those of Pompey’s villa. It was surely no coincidence that there were no windows or other means of ingress on the lower floors, which made the building practically impregnable to anyone approaching from below. The long gallery would not only afford spectacular views, but could be used to defend against attackers, like the parapet of a fortress.

  The entrance to the villa was located on the opposite side of the topmost floor, which was the only part of the building visible from the eastern, uphill side of the building. A great mass of earth had been removed from the hillside to make a level courtyard in front of the entrance. Materials for constructing a wall were stacked around the courtyard’s perimeter, but the wall had not yet been erected. Clodius and his architect must have realized the vulnerable nature of the villa’s entrance, and had intended to do something about it. Neither of them would finish the job now.

  We came to the entrance, a double door made of solid oak, ornately carved and darkened by age. I wondered if it had come from the House of the Vestals. I rapped on it politely with my foot. When there was no answer, I rapped again.

  “I wonder what sort of reception we should expect,” said Eco, casting a wary eye at the nearby stable and the silent courtyard. There was not a person or animal in sight. “Where is everyone?”

  “Fulvia told me she’s shut the villa for the time being.”

  “You mean there’s no one here?”

  “A place as big as this can hardly have been abandoned entirely; there must be some staff in residence. No, I took her to mean that she’s canceled construction, closed the kitchen and shut off the visitors’ quarters. I’m sure we’ll find someone here.”

  I had no sooner spoken than the door to the stable opened and a boy stepped out, carrying a heavy basket with both arms. He saw us, let out a scream and ran back into the stable, dropping his burden behind him. The basket tipped over, spilling its contents. I tried to make out whether it was millet or oats …

  Then a giant wasp buzzed by my head. That was what it seemed like, at least, for a brief, paralyzing instant: a sudden, malicious whirring in front of my face, so close it tickled my nose with the wind of its passing and left a sharp rushing sound in my ears. Then there was a thud of collision and the music of vibrating wood, and the sight of a shuddering spear in front of my face, impaled in the door.

  20

  Which surprised me more—the spear from an unknown quarter that barely missed my nose, or the blinding speed with which Davus reacted?

  However stiff-muscled and slow-witted he might appear, Davus had the reflexes of a chasing hound. He was across the courtyard and scrambling over a pile of bricks before I had time to blink. Even Eco, as quick and nimble as I was in my prime, was left looking after him like a dazed runner left at the starting block.

  Davus reached the top of the brick pile and leaped open-armed into space. An instant later there was
a sound of two bodies colliding and a sharp exhalation that turned into a yelp of pain. Then Davus called out, “Master! Come quick, I can’t hold him!”

  Eco raced across the courtyard. I followed behind. He went one way around the brick pile, I went the other. I heard another collision, a grunt, a spray of flying gravel. I came upon Davus on the far side of the pile, just getting to his feet. Together we ran to find Eco, who stood clutching his middle, the breath knocked out of him. Lying flat on his back in front of Eco, his eyelids flickering, was a boy who could hardly have been more than ten years old.

  “I didn’t touch him,” said Eco, catching his breath. “He ran straight into me, almost knocked me down. He fell back and must have hit his head …”

  The boy was dazed but not seriously hurt. He gradually came to his senses and gave a start when he saw the three of us peering down at him. His first reaction was an attempt to scramble to his feet, rendered impossible by the fact that Davus stood with a foot on each sleeve of the boy’s tunic, pinning him down.

  “You needn’t struggle, young man,” said Eco. “It doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere.”

  The boy stuck out his jaw and narrowed his eyes, but his mask of defiance was all too easy to see through. His chin quivered and his eyes shifted constantly from face to face.

  “We have no desire to hurt you,” I said, in a gentler tone than Eco had used. “What’s your name?”

  The boy squinted up at me. From his point of view on the ground, we must have looked like giants, especially Davus. The squint was clearly for show, another way of masking his fear; his eyesight had to be perfect to have thrown a spear with such accuracy. “My name is Mopsus,” he finally said. His voice shook.

  “And your friend? The boy in the stable, the one who screamed when he saw us. That’s why you threw the spear, wasn’t it, because he screamed and you thought he was in danger?”

  The boy’s squint relaxed a bit. “My little brother, Androcles.”

  “Ah, your brother. No wonder you were worried for him.” I looked toward the stable. The door, which was barely ajar, gave a little jerk. “Androcles must be quite worried for you right now. But he needn’t be. As I said, we have no desire to harm either of you.”

  “Then what are you here for?” His gruff voice rose to a squeak. Davus laughed. The boy turned red with anger. He thrashed helplessly on the ground, which made Davus laugh again.

  “Tell this big elephant to get off me!” Anger finally drove out fear and lent a surprising authority to his voice.

  “Certainly, as soon as you’ve answered a few questions. Why does no one come to the door? Where is everyone?”

  The boy shifted and wriggled, straining against his confinement. There was no way for him to escape from his long-sleeved tunic as long as Davus stood on the sleeves. Nor could he kick high enough to strike Davus.

  “You really are stuck, I’m afraid,” I said.

  “We could string him up, Papa. Perhaps start a fire under him, roast him like a pig—”

  “Eco, don’t joke! He’ll take you seriously. Something tells me this young fellow has seen awful things done to helpless men. That’s why he’s so afraid of us. Am I right, Mopsus?”

  The boy said nothing, but the look in his eyes answered for him.

  “My name is Gordianus. This is my son, Eco. And that elephant, as you call him, is my bodyguard, Davus. We come to this house in peace, just the three of us. We did nothing to your brother. He saw us from the stable door, screamed and ran back in.”

  Mopsus wriggled in a paroxysm of disgust. “Stupid Androcles! He always was a little screamer, afraid of his shadow!”

  “I am not!” squeaked a voice from the breach of the stable door.

  “Androcles, you fool! Get out of there! Run to the mill! Wake them up, tell them—” Mopsus bit his tongue.

  Davus and Eco looked to me. I put a finger to my lips. I walked in a circle around the brick pile, retracing my earlier steps to the courtyard, then approached the stable door from a direction that couldn’t be seen from the breach. I yanked the door open, thrust out my arm and put my hand gently but firmly on the shoulder of a little boy who looked up at me with eyes like moons.

  “Don’t be afraid, Androcles. You’re not a screamer, like your brother says, are you?”

  The child looked at me solemnly and shook his head.

  “I thought not. Here, take my hand. Good. Now, let us go and talk some sense into your silly older brother.”

  Mopsus writhed in disgust. “Androcles, you idiot! Now they’ve captured you, too.”

  Androcles looked up at me solemnly, then at Eco and Davus in turn. “I think they may be all right, Mopsus. Not bad, like the others.”

  “The others probably sent them, you stupid ass, to ambush us and finish us off!” Mopsus’s voice squeaked out of control again, making Davus laugh.

  “The big elephant is funny.” Androcles gazed up at Davus with a look of awe.

  “You won’t think it’s very funny when they flay us alive, like they did to Halicor!” said Mopsus.

  Androcles shuddered at the idea, but when I squeezed his hand he seemed reassured. “Halicor was the tutor of young Publius Clodius, wasn’t he?” I said.

  “How would you know that, unless they sent you?” Mopsus practically spat the words. Having his little brother for an audience gave him the courage to keep up a pretense of toughness.

  “By they, you mean the men who killed Halicor?”

  “Who else? Milo’s men! Maybe Milo himself sent you—”

  “No!” The sternness in my voice silenced him. “Look at me, Mopsus. And you, Androcles. I swear to you, by the shade of my own father, that Milo did not send me here and I have not come on his behalf.”

  “Who did send you, then?” said Mopsus warily.

  “The day before I left Rome, I had a long talk with your mistress. Fulvia asked me to do some work for her.” It was true, after all, if not the entire truth. I saw no need to complicate matters by mentioning the Great One.

  Mopsus softened a bit. “The mistress sent you?”

  “Fulvia asked me to investigate a certain aspect of your late master’s death. I’m called the Finder. I have experience in such matters.”

  “Maybe he can find the men who killed Halicor!” suggested Androcles, looking at his brother with wide eyes.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, screamer, we know who killed him. We saw them do it with our own eyes.”

  “Did you, indeed? Your mistress didn’t tell me that, only that Halicor had been killed, along with the foreman and two other slaves. She mentioned no witnesses.”

  “That’s because no one knows that we saw,” said Mopsus.

  “Until now!” Little Androcles put his hands on his hips and looked accusingly at his older brother, as if to ask which of them was the stupid screamer now.

  “I shall want to hear all about it,” I said, “but first I want to know what you meant when you told Androcles to run to the mill and wake the others. What others?”

  Mopsus looked up at me, biting his lip and debating whether to cooperate. I could almost see his thoughts at work. His little brother seemed to be in no harm, and no real threats had been made against them; his captors had disavowed any allegiance to Milo and instead had invoked the name of his mistress in Rome, a lady probably as remote and exotic to such a boy as a goddess from Olympus. Perhaps most importantly, he was beginning to get very tired of being pinned to the ground.

  “Let me up and I’ll tell you,” he said.

  “You won’t run away? Because if you do, Davus will run after you—I can hardly stop him, he’s like a dog without a leash—and when he catches you, he’ll never stop laughing.”

  Androcles covered his mouth and giggled at the thought. Mopsus turned red. “I won’t run. Just get the elephant off me!”

  “Davus, step back.”

  Davus did so, but remained poised to chase after the boy, his long muscular legs ready to spring. He looked like one
of those magnificent giant cats one sees at exotic animal shows in the arena, except for his grin, for such beasts never smile. Where had the crippling stiffness of the morning gone to? Ah, to be that young again, invulnerable like Achilles.

  Mopsus got to his feet and dusted himself off. He made a sour face at Davus, who showed the good sense to suppress his laughter. “What were you saying?”

  “The others you mentioned—down at the mill …”

  “Asleep, probably. Like they usually are at this time of the morning after they’ve been drinking the night before, which they have been ever since they broke into the little house where the master stored his wine.”

  “Mopsus!” His little brother frowned at him and shook his head.

  “What do I care? It’s only the truth. It’s their job to guard the house, our job to take care of the stable. They should get into trouble!”

  “Then there’s no one in the house at all?” I said.

  “No. It’s all locked up. After what happened, the mistress called all the servants back to Rome, except for the men to guard the building.”

  “And us, to look after the animals,” added his brother. “Tell her we’re doing our job.”

  “I shall do that,” I promised.

  “But don’t tell on the others,” said Androcles, suddenly very earnest. “Not if it means they’ll be punished.” He suddenly began to cry.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Mopsus. “He’s remembering what Milo’s men did to Halicor and the foreman. That’s not how the mistress would punish drunken guards, stupid. She’d have them whipped a bit. She wouldn’t cut their limbs off.”

  “How do you know?” The child sniffed.