A murder on the Appian way rsr-5

by Steven Saylor

  The thief held up his hand and shook it. "What, these? Who ever said that justice should be free, eh? We deserve our payment, don't we? As much as these rich folk deserve their pretty things." He made such an ugly face that I thought he was about to come after us with his dagger. Instead he threw the handful of jewellery at our feet. The silver clinked against the paving stones and the strand of pearls burst. Pink and white baubles bounced everywhere like bits of hail. The men behind him yelled and cursed.

  "Who cares?" he shouted. "There'll be plenty more where that came from." He turned and led his raiding party down the street away from us, towards the next house.

  My heart began to pound in my chest. If they were headed in the opposite direction, that meant they had already been to my house…

  My head felt light. I blinked at oily spots before my eyes. Confronted with the possibility of my own death, a part of me always reacted with sceptical resignation. Facing the possibility of something terrible happening to Bethesda and Diana, I felt an overwhelming dread.

  Eco understood. He clutched my hand and squeezed it. As we approached the house I looked for signs of fire or smoke and saw none. Then I saw the double doors of the entrance. They were standing wide open. The lock had been broken. So had the bar, which lay across the threshold broken in two pieces.

  I stepped into the foyer, which seemed very dark after the daylight outside. Rushing forwards, I tripped over something large and solid. Eco and Davus helped me up. "Papa — " said Eco.

  I hurried on. "Bethesda! Diana!"

  No one answered. I ran from room to room, only vaguely aware that Eco and his men followed after me. Couches and chairs had been knocked over. Cabinets lay on their sides with their doors open.

  In my bedroom, the sleeping couch had been senselessly ripped open and the sniffing pulled out in handfuls. A pool of something dark and slick shimmered on the floor in front of Bethesda's dressing table. Blood? I shuddered, close to tears, then realized that it was only unguent from a broken jar which had fallen to the floor.

  There was no one in the kitchens, no one in the sleeping quarters. "Where were the slaves?

  I hurried on to Diana's room. The door of her wardrobe stood open and her clothes were scattered all over the floor. The little silver box where she kept her few pieces of jewellery was gone. I called her name. There was no answer.

  I came to my study. The scroll cases were empty. They had plucked every scroll from its pigeonhole, probably looking for hidden valuables. Having found none, they had at least left my scrolls and writing instruments intact. Of what use were such things to thieves? Everything lay in piles on the floor, scattered but undamaged, the scrolls still tightly rolled and tied with ribbons.

  Then I caught a whiff of something foul. I wrinkled my nose and followed the smell to the corner of the room. Someone had defecated on the floor and then used a torn piece of parchment to wipe himself. I carefully picked up the scrap by a corner to see what it was and read a few lines:

  Father, what wretchedness is on us now! I mourn for you still more than for the dead.

  Poor Antigone! Poor Euripides!

  I stepped from my study into the garden at the centre of the house. The bronze statue of Minerva, which I had inherited from my dear friend Lucius Claudius along with the house, which had been his pride and joy and mine, which had elicited the envy of Cicero himself) had been pulled from its pedestal. Did they think to find some secret treasure chamber beneath it, or did they act out of sheer, wanton destructiveness? The bronze should have survived the fell, but there must have been some hidden flaw in its casting. The virgin goddess of wisdom lay broken in two pieces.

  "Papa!"

  "What, Eco? Have you found them?"

  "No, Papa. Not Bethesda or Diana. But in the foyer — you should come and see for yourself…" "See what?"

  Before he could answer, a voice from the sky called both our names. I looked up and saw Diana peering over the edge of the roof. My throat constricted and I almost sobbed with relief.

  "Diana! Oh, Diana! But what — how did you get up there?"

  "The ladder, of course. Then we pulled it up after us. And then we kept out of sight and stayed quiet. The thieves never even knew we were here."

  "Your mother as well?"

  "Yes. She wasn't afraid to climb the ladder at all! And the slaves, too. It was my idea."

  "And a brilliant idea it was." Tears welled in my eyes until Diana became a blur.

  "And look, Papa! I even thought to save my jewellery box." She held it proudly before her.

  "Yes, very good. Go get your mother now," I said, impatient to see with my own eyes that Bethesda was safe. "Tell Belbo to come, too."

  Eco spoke softly in my ear. "Papa, come to the foyer." "What?"

  "Come." He took my arm and led me there.

  When I first rushed into the house, I had tripped over something large and heavy. The thing I had tripped over was a body. Eco's men had rolled him onto his back and pulled him into the light.

  Belbo's face, normally so bovine and amenable, was frozen in a grimace of fierce determination. In his right hand he clenched a dagger with blood on it. The front of his pale tunic was spotted with great blossoms of red.

  He had died just inside the broken door, defending the breach, striving to keep them out. His dagger testified that he had inflicted at least one wound, but he had taken many more.

  The tears which I had been holding back, which I had begrudgingly released in my relief at seeing Diana, now came in a blinding flood. The simple, cheerful man who had been my loyal companion for twenty-five years and the protector of my loved ones, who had saved my life more than once, who had always seemed lit from within by a steady flame which nothing could extinguish, lay lifeless at my feet. Belbo was dead.

  Part Two

  Road

  X

  The looting and burning went on for days.

  Rome was utterly without order. Fires broke out or were deliberately started all over the city. A haze of smoke settled into the valleys between the seven hills. Teams of slaves and hired freedmen, their clothes and faces smeared with soot, rushed from crisis to crisis.

  I heard women screaming in the night, hoarse cries for help, the clash of steel against steel. There were wild rumours of every sort of outrage — rapes, murders, kidnappings, children trapped in houses and burned alive, men hung upside down by their feet at street corners, beaten to death with clubs and left hanging like trophies.

  The day after Belbo was killed, Eco and I braved the streets to deliver his body to the necropolis outside the city walls. Two of my household slaves pulled the cart bearing his corpse. Eco's bodyguards flanked our procession. Though we passed several gangs of looters, no one disturbed us. They were too busy plundering the living to bother with the dead.

  At the grove of Libitina we entered Belbo into the registry of the dead. The cremators were very busy that day. Belbo was burned along with several others on a flaming pyre, and then his ashes were taken to a common grave. It seemed too small an end to such a robust life.

  Eco and I debated whether my family should go to his house, or his family should come to my house, so as to join our defences. In the end, we decided to leave his household slaves at the house on the Esquiline, so as to guard the place, but to move Menenia and the twins into my house, which, once the door was repaired and strengthened, was arguably more defensible. The Palatine was dangerous, but there had been numerous fires and reports of atrocities on the Esquiline as well, and down in the Subura there was no semblance of order at all. Besides, my house had already been ransacked. There was no reason for the same looters to come back a second time.

  As is wont to happen in such circumstances, the air of crisis actually lent a comforting solidarity to the household. Bethesda, Menenia and Diana all worked together, seeing to the repair of the damaged furniture, making lists of the things that needed to be replaced, finding ways to keep the household fed when most of the markets were shut
down and the rest were open for only a few unpredictable hours each day. The twins, Titus and Titania, sensing the gravity of the situation, were eager to help and behaved with a maturity beyond their seven years. I felt safer in the company of Davus and the other bodyguards, and it was good to have Eco beside me. But the ransacked house itself was a constant reminder of our vulnerability. Whenever I passed through the garden, I saw the Minerva lying broken on the ground. Whenever I passed through the foyer, I remembered Belbo as we had found him. I felt his absence acutely. Sometimes I called his name aloud before stopping myself He had been at my side every day for so long that I had come to take him for granted, like the air; and like the air, once he was gone I realized just how much I had needed him.

  One interrex gave way to the next, and the next, and there were still no elections or even the prospect of elections. How could there be, in such a state of chaos? Day by day and hour by hour the sentiment seemed to be growing that Rome needed a dictator. Occasionally the name of Caesar was mentioned. More often, and more vehemently, it was Pompey who was invoked, as if the Great One's name were some magical incantation that could put all wrongs to right.

  Each day I thought that I might hear from Cicero again, but there were no more summons from Tiro, no hushed meetings with Milo and Caelius. I almost wished that Cicero would call for me, so that I could get some idea of what he and his circle were up to in the midst of the disorder.

  It was another who came calling for me instead.

  It was a cold, bright Februarius morning. Eco had gone to check on affairs at his house, so I was alone in my study. Despite the chill, I had opened the shutters to let in some sunlight and fresh air. Perhaps the many fires all over the city had at last been quenched; I could smell only a faint tang of smoke. Davus came into my study to say that a litter accompanied by a train of slaves was camped outside my front door, and that one of the slaves had a message for me. litter?"

  "Yes. Quite a grand vehicle. It has — "

  "Red and white stripes," I said, with a stab of intuition.

  "Why yes." He raised his eyebrows and I was reminded, with a pang of sadness, of Belbo. Young Davus looked nothing like him, being dark and considerably more handsome than Belbo had ever been, but he was of the same size and bovine demeanour. He wrinkled his brow. "It looks familiar."

  "Could it be the same litter we saw arrive at the house of Clodius, on the night of his death?"

  "I think it must be."

  "I see. And there's a slave with a message, you say? Show him in."

  The man was typical of Clodia's male servants, young and impeccably groomed with a striking profile and a muscular neck. I would have known who sent him even if Davus had not told me about the litter, for there was a hint of her perfume about his clothes. I had never forgotten that scent, with its blend of spikenard and costly crocus oil. He must have been a very favoured slave to smell so strongly of his mistress.

  His status was confirmed by his haughty manner. He sniffed and peered about my study as if he were thinking of buying the house, not just delivering a message. "Well," I finally said, "what does Clodia want from me, young man?"

  He gave me a dubious look as if to say, I can't imagine, then smiled. "She requests the pleasure of your company in her litter."

  "In her litter? What, does she expect me to go traipsing through the streets in a litter, at a time like this, with all that's going on?"

  "If it's your safety you're concerned about, don't worry. Where else could you possibly be safer?"

  Certainly not here, he seemed to suggest, looking over my shoulder and through the open shutters at the broken Minerva in the garden. And he was probably right. It was the Clodians who were rioting; they all knew Clodia's litter; they would scarcely attack their idol's sister. Besides that, her retinue probably included some of the biggest and fiercest gladiators in the city. Indeed, where else could I possibly be safer than skimming across the Palatine in Clodia's litter-unless, of course, we ran into a gang of Milo's men out looking for trouble…

  On the other hand, considering the circumstances — anarchy in the streets, rival gangs waging virtual civil war, a looming dictatorship, an uncertain future — it was probably not a good idea to consort with Clodia at the moment. Eco would surely have advised me against it, but Eco was not there, and I was tired of hiding in my house, playing passive spectator to a city spinning out of control. So long as Cicero had taken me into his confidence, however suspicious the circumstances, I had felt that I had access to special knowledge. The privilege of knowing more than other men reassured me; it gave me a sense of control and power, whether real or not. Now I felt cut ofЈ adrift, more anxious than if I were deliberately courting a danger that I at least comprehended. A meeting with Clodia promised a glimmer of privileged information. I couldn't resist.

  ' The chance to be close to Clodia again had nothing to do with it, Itold myself. The opportunity to recline next to her in her litter, cocooned in the aura of her perfume, close enough to feel the heat of her body…

  "Davus, tell your mistress that I've been called away on a small errand. I don't expect to be away long, but if I am, I’ll send a messenger."

  "You're going out, Master?"

  "Yes."

  "I should go with you."

  "You'll hardly be needed," said Clodia's slave, giving Davus a disparaging look. I suppose Davus looked puny to him compared to Clodia's red-haired giants.

  "I suspect the fellow's right, Davus. I'd rather "you stayed here to look after the house."

  I followed the slave through the foyer and out of the house. Under the cold sun the red and white canopy of the litter was dazzling. The air was almost still with only a hint of a breeze, but the fabric was so delicate that the stripes wavered and brushed against one another like trembling serpents. The red-haired gladiators surrounding the litter drew themselves to attention. One of the bearers rushed to put down a block of wood before the entrance to the litter, to serve as a step. Before I could do it myself the curtains were parted from within. The slave girl who opened them moved aside and nodded towards the place where I was to sit, next to her mistress, but all I saw were Clodia's eyes. Her famous eyes: Catullus, in one of his love poems, had said they guttered like emeralds; Cicero, in die speech which had nearly destroyed her, had said that Clodia's eyes flashed like sparks from a whetted blade. Her eyes could seduce, or scandalize; her eyes could also weep. They glittered now with tears. I wondered if she had ever stopped crying since her brother died.

  She turned her face away. In any other circumstances I might have thought the movement was calculated to show off the striking profile of her forehead and the line of her nose. Her lustrous dark hair hung down, unpinned for grieving. Her gown was black, as were the cushions around her. The corner seemed to swallow her up in darkness, except for her face and throat, which were a luminous, creamy white.

  I slipped into the litter beside her. She reached for my hand, still averting her eyes. "Thank you for coming, Gordianus. I was afraid you might not."

  "Why, for fear of the streets?"

  "No, for fear of your Alexandrian wife." Her lips compressed into the barest smile.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To Clodius's house." The smile grew rigid. "Or to Fulvia's house, I suppose I should say." "What for?"

  "You must remember, when I invited you into the house on the night he died — I had a premonition that we might need you, sooner or later. I was right. It's Fulvia who needs you."

  "Really? I seem to recall that your sister-in-law was less than pleased with my presence in the mourning room."

  "Things change. Fulvia is a pragmatist. You happen to be the man that she needs right now."

  "For what?"

  "She'll explain that to you herself But this is what I ask from you: anything that you discover about my brother's death-tell me, please." She turned her eyes on me then, and squeezed my hand. "I know you believe in the truth, Gordianus. I know how much it matters to you.
It matters to me, as well. If only I could know for certain how Clodius died, who killed him, and why, then perhaps I could finally stop weeping." She managed another faint smile and let go of my hand. "We've arrived."

  "Already?" The ride had been so smooth that I had scarcely known we were moving at all.

  "I'll wait here until you're ready to leave, and then take you home again."

  The slave girl pulled back the curtains for me. The block of wood awaited my step. The great forecourt of Clodius's house was empty except for several men guarding the terraces and the gate. One.of Clodia's gladiators accompanied me up the steps. The massive doors opened inward as if a gust of divine wind preceded me.

  A slave accompanied me through the halls and galleries and up a flight of stairs to a room I hadn't seen before. It was at a corner of the house, with open windows that commanded a view of Palatine rooftops and the great temples on the Capitoline Hill beyond. The walls were stained with a bright green wash and decorated with blue and white borders in a geometrical Greek design. It was a bright, cheerful room, airy and light.

  I saw Sempronia first. She sat in a chair close by the windows, wrapped in a red blanket to ward off the chill. Her long grey hair was still worn down for mourning, but it was gathered by a pin at the nape of her neck and hung straight behind her, touching the floor. The look she gave me was almost as cold as the air from outside.

  Fulvia stepped in front of the windows. The light streaming in was so bright that I saw her only as a tall, narrow silhouette. As she stepped closer the veil of shadow over her features slowly dissolved. She was as I remembered her, plainer than Clodia but striking in her own fashion, younger and with something very shrewd about her eyes. She sat in the chair beside her mother. As there were no other chairs in the room, I remained standing.

  Fulvia looked at me appraisingly. "Clodia says you're clever. I suppose she ought to know."