A murder on the Appian way rsr-5

by Steven Saylor

  "His belly, you fool," said Eco, managing to sound as if he were both angry and anxious and trying hard to show neither.

  Our keepers withdrew in silence, but there was another heated discussion outside the door, receding into the unseen, unknown distance.

  "Since we'll be getting out of here soon" I began.

  Why not be madly optimistic? It was the forty-fourth day of our captivity, seven days before the Ides of Martius, the fourth day of my feigned malady. Eco had again succeeded in capturing, killing and bleeding a rat. "His craving for a bit of bread outweighed his better judgment," to quote the solemn eulogy which Eco delivered as we buried the creature in a corner out of sight, and hopefully out of smell.

  "Yes?" prompted Eco.

  "Since we'll soon be out of here, I think we should try to figure out as best we can who had a reason to put us here."

  "Perhaps we'll be able to find out from our keepers."

  "If all goes well, either we will be running from our keepers or they will be running from us. I doubt that there will be much conversation. Anyway, going over the known facts of our dilemma will give us something to puzzle over for an hour or two."

  "Again?"

  "Humour me. Unless you have an appointment to be somewhere at a certain time? I thought not. Well then, what did we discover on the Appian Way? Or more to the point, what did we not discover?"

  "That's a question fit to give Aristotle a headache, Papa! You might as well ask me to prove a negative."

  "You're right. Step by step, then. If we believe the account of the priestess Felicia, Milo and Clodius met on the Appian Way by accident. There was no ambush. The two parties passed without incident until they were nearly clear of each other. Clodius uttered a parting insult to Birria. Birria, on impulse, turned and hurled his spear at Clodius. It was no more premeditated than a brawl in a tavern."

  "But it's possible, Papa, that Birria intended to throw the spear all along, on his master's orders. Perhaps Birria hurled an insult at Clodius first and Felicia didn't hear it; Clodius responded and Birria used that as a pretext to begin the attack. It could have been premeditated, or perhaps Milo issued an order to Birria on the spur of the moment, when the two parties met. Milo had the superior force. Perhaps he saw his chance to kill Clodius and seized it."

  "A good point, Eco. At any rate, we've seen no evidence whatsoever that Clodius planned or instigated the skirmish in any way, except by hurling an insult at Birria. The conflict probably occurred spontaneously, or possibly at Milo's instigation. What ensues? Clodius's outnumbered men are quickly overwhelmed. Some are killed on the spot, others flee into the woods. The wounded Clodius, without his horse and cut off from his villa by Milo's entourage, is assisted by some five or six of his men downhill towards Bovillae. He takes refuge at the inn, where the innkeeper knows and likes him."

  I rubbed my hands together to warm them. The pit seemed especially dank that day. "Milo's men do not follow immediately. Felicia says they ran about like hounds who'd lost a scent, until Milo came up. He was furious at first, especially at Birria."

  "Because Birria had attacked Clodius on his own — or because he had failed to finish the job?" said Eco.

  "I suspect the first Once Milo calmed down he held a sort of conference, and only then did he dispatch Eudamus and Birria and several others to pursue Clodius. This seems highly significant to me; had Milo planned all along to assassinate Clodius, I think his men would have been prepared to pursue Clodius at once and would have done so, especially since he was wounded and moving slowly on foot. Why did they wait? I think it must be that they needed instructions from their master, who was completely taken aback by what had happened. Why did he upbraid Birria? Because the gladiator had acted rashly and stupidly and without his consent. True, Milo might have been mad at his men for failing to make a clean killing of Clodius, but I favour the idea that the incident was spontaneous and unplanned, and that when Clodius made off on foot no one was quite sure what to do next."

  "But they did eventually pursue him."

  "Yes, because Milo made a decision to finish what his men had already started, without his consent. Which was more dangerous to him, Clodius wounded, or Clodius dead? Wounded, Clodius could return to Rome, rally his forces, bring legal proceedings against Milo for attempted murder, end Milo's bid for the consulship. If Clodius was dead, Milo would be liable for murder, but at least Clodius's followers might be paralysed with confusion, and Clodius himself wouldn't be around to accuse him. Either way, Milo was facing the ruin of everything he'd worked for. That's another reason I can't believe that the incident was premeditated. To have murdered Clodius by poison or stealth would have been one thing, but to have done so in such a clumsy fashion could only hurt Milo in the end. I wonder if he thought of his namesake Milo of Croton in the forest, trying to split that giant log and getting his hands hopelessly trapped? Did he hear the howling of hungry wolves as he paced there on the Appian Way, fretting over what to do next? It should have been an occasion of triumph for Milo — the end of Clodius, once and for all, within his grasp — but I think it must have been a very miserable moment for him."

  "But he finally decided to send his men after Clodius," said Eco. "Once you've wounded a dangerous beast, it's always best to kill it. No doubt it's what Milo of Croton would have done."

  "So he dispatched his men, then waited for news. Rather cowardly of him, not to join the battle himself."

  "If you asked him, I imagine he'd say he hung back to stand guard over his wife and household."

  Eco snorted derisively, then his face became shadowed. I had said the words sarcastically, but as soon as they were out of my mouth, it was hard not to think of our own loved ones and how vulnerable they were without us.

  "Anyway," I said, "not too much later, along comes Senator Tedius and his daughter in their litter, with their own retinue of household slaves and bodyguards. Tedius and Milo recognize one another. Milo tells an outright lie — that he was set upon by bandits — and advises Tedius to turn back. The stubborn old senator instead presses on, despite some demurral on the part of his pious daughter.

  "Meanwhile, down in Bovillae, the battle is joined. The innkeeper's wife — whose evidence we have secondhand from her sister — actually sees Eudamus and Birria kill one of Clodius's men on their approach to the inn. There's a terrific assault which destroys all the shutters and doors on the lower floor. The innkeeper is killed, along with Clodius's defenders. Clodius somehow ends up out in the road. We presume that Eudamus and Birria take his gold ring as a trophy, and to deliver proof of his death to their master. And then, for some reason, Eudamus and Birria and their men vanish, for when Tedius arrives a little later, the battle is over and the victors are gone. Tedius finds the inn a shambles. He sees blood and bodies scattered all about, including that of Clodius. The innkeeper's wife emerges from hiding on the upper floor. She looks out the window to see Tedius and his daughter leaning over Clodius. She goes downstairs, discovers her dead husband and loses her senses.

  Tedius, despite his dislike of the man and his politics, does the honourable thing and loads Clodius into his litter, then sends the body on to Rome. He still thinks all the killing is the work of bandits, and decides to return to Aricia on foot. He turns about and trudges up the hill. While he stops to rest close to the House of the Vestals, Eudamus andBirria appear on the road and pass him, returning to Milo. How was it that he didn't see them before? Eudamus and Birria have prisoners. Felicia, peering out from the shrine of the Good Goddess, also sees these prisoners. Who are they? Not any of Clodius's men; the ones who fled with Clodius were all killed, and Fulvia told me that none of her husband's men were unaccounted for. So where did Eudamus and Birria come from and who were their prisoners?

  "The gladiators return to Milo and deliver Clodius's ring, proof that he's dead. Milo then hands it over to Fausta, who proceeds down the road to make her offering at the House of the Vestals. But somehow Sextus Tedius never sees her. And when Tedi
us finishes his rest and moves on, by the time he reaches the shrine of the Good Goddess, Milo and all his company are gone.

  "We know that Milo and the gladiators headed for the villa, where they killed the foreman and Halicor the tutor when they weren't able to find young Publius Clodius. Why was Milo seeking the boy? Is he really so spiteful and bloodthirsty that he wanted to murder Clodius's son? Or did he intend to somehow use the boy as a hostage? And how did he know that young Publius was staying at the villa?

  "These are the questions, then, for which we have no answers." I picked up Eco's marking stick and for each question scraped a numeral in the wall.

  "One: Where were Eudamus and Birria when Sextus Tedius arrived at the inn?

  "Two: Who were the prisoners Eudamus and Birria herded up the road?

  "Three: How did Fausta return down the road to make her offering at the House of the Vestals without passing Sextus Tedius?

  "Four: When Milo forced his way into Clodius's villa, he demanded of Halicor and the foreman, 'Where is Publius Clodius?' — but how did he know the boy was at the villa, and what did he intend to do with him?"

  I stood back and studied the marks -1, II, III, IV. They elucidated nothing. The longer I looked at them, the more they began to appear to be only an assemblage of upright and slanted lines signifying nothing, not even the numbers in my head. They were random lines etched by an idiot. For one brief, shuddering instant I thought I must truly have gone mad. The captivity, the darkness, the stench, the nightmares and the rats all coalesced like a black fog around my head. Nothing made sense; nothing was real. The whole drama of the murder on the Appian Way was only an elaborate fantasy I had contrived to amuse myself, a madman's epic. Milo and Clodius were figments of my imagination. Nothing existed but the pit.

  "Papa? Are you all right?"

  "What?"

  "Your hand's shaking. You dropped the stick." Eco stooped and retrieved it for me.

  His voice returned me to the moment. I clutched the stick in my hand, more firmly than I needed to. I reached out and slowly scraped another numeral into the wall, keeping my hand and my voice as steady as I could. "And now the more immediate questions, which surely must be related in some way to the first four.

  "Five: Who waylaid us upon our return to Rome? We can be sure, I think, that they were not common kidnappers, looking for a ransom. They'd have wanted me to write something on a scrap of parchment, to prove I was alive. And they'd have figured out by now that there's no ransom to be had. We'd already be dead." The numerals on the wall began to lose their meaning again and I looked away, at the dank mound where Eco had buried the newest rat that morning. "Unless we're dead already."

  "Of course they're not common kidnappers," Eco said, pretending not to hear my muttering. "They acted for someone who didn't like what we were up to on the Appian Way."

  "More precisely, someone who was afraid of the information we might be bringing back to Rome. Therefore, six: To whom did we make ourselves dangerous with our investigation on the Appian Way?"

  "But isn't it obvious, Papa? Milo, of course. We know he lied outrageously at Caelius's contio, with that tale about an ambush, and we know how to prove it. It's as you said to Felicia when you advised her to fly south — Milo is in a desperate situation, willing to commit desperate acts."

  "Which leads us to the final question." I scraped the numeral VII into the wall. "Why were we kidnapped, not killed? If Milo — or whoever — merely wanted to dispose of us, why did his henchmen not murder us and steal our valuables, to make the incident look like another robbery by nameless bandits by the Monument of Basilius? If he wanted to ascertain what we had uncovered first, why were we not questioned, and then killed? Why did Milo not finish us off, as he finished off Clodius? Does he have some future use for us? I can't imagine what. It makes me wonder whether it was Milo who put us here after all."

  "Who else? The only other person you kept asking questions about was — "

  "Marc Antony," I said.

  The stable door rattled open.

  "Perhaps this is the day we'll find out,'- whispered Eco. I dropped to the floor of the pit, hugging myself.

  The inspection of the bloody urine proceeded like a ritual, with our keepers — both of them had come in together — peering into the bucket like augurs studying some poor chicken's entrails.

  "Your father doesn't look well," said the one who usually stayed outside.

  "What, have you just figured that out?" Eco sounded outraged, frightened, frustrated. There was a quaver in his voice. Some of this was acting, but I could tell that the quaver came not from desperation, but from its opposite, a sudden exhilaration so acute it made him tremble like the plucked string of an instrument. Had the moment come at last? Yes! I sensed it, too. A frightful, wonderful rage welled up inside us both, a joyous fury that had been suppressed for long days in the dark but finally, finally, at that very instant, was ready to be released.

  "Your father had better come with us," said the one who usually stayed outside. He bent to unlock the chain that held the trapdoor shut. The two of them pulled up on the heavy iron door and let it drop back onto the grille with a clang.

  The door of the cage was open.

  "I don't think he can stand." Eco's voice broke like a boy's as he fussed over me, acting helpless.

  "How in Hades are we going to get him out?" complained our usual keeper.

  "Get your father onto his feet somehow," said the other. "That's it. Get him to raise his arms. If he can't raise them himself) raise them for him! By Hercules, is the fellow still alive or not? There, now we'll each grab a forearm. Be careful leaning over, you fool!"

  The greatest mistake a general can make, as Caesar and Pompey would agree, is to underestimate the strength of your enemy. I had convinced them that I was weak, in pain and very ill. They took hold of my forearms to haul me up, expecting a frail body that offered no resistance. The instant before they heaved together, I pulled downward with all my strength. Eco joined in, jumping up to grab their arms above the elbows.

  All could have been lost in that instant. They could have kept their balance and pulled themselves free, leaving me to fall onto my backside, looking like an utter fool. The door would have hurriedly clanged shut, our keepers would have cursed us and then laughed at us, and we would have been left alone in the pit once more, to follow the same maddening thoughts in the same dogged circles, to sleep amid rats, to despair for our loved ones, to lie in anguish and wonder how much longer we could bear it.

  But that was not what happened.

  First, their heads collided with a loud knock. The sound had a lower pitch than two stones struck together, but higher than two hollow gourds. It was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard.

  What followed happened very quickly.

  One of them, the one who usually stayed outside, tumbled headfirst into the pit. I fell upon him at once. Eco's marking stick was still in my hand. In the past few days we had managed to sharpen it to a fine point by whetting it against some of the stones in the pit. I stabbed him at least once before I realized there was no need. The fall had broken his neck.

  I turned and saw that I was alone with his lifeless body in the pit. Eco — had already scrambled up and out. I heard the sound of a struggle taking place in the stable above.

  I put the makeshift dagger between my teeth, tasting blood, and leaped for the opening. I grabbed one of the iron bars and pulled myself up. We had practised this movement every day, leaping and pulling ourselves up, strengthening bur arms. Still, I thought that pulling myself through the opening would be a greater challenge than it was. Instead I seemed almost to fly upward, as if an unseen hand pushed me from below. Cold fury propelled me, and the certain knowledge that Fortune had turned in our direction.

  Eco and the keeper were rolling on the floor, thrashing at each other. Eco was by far the smaller of the two, but he was driven by the same fury that drove me, and he was managing to hold his own. I ran towards them, r
aising the crude wooden dagger. There was already a patch of blood on the man's forehead. There was more blood, and a loud scream, when I brought the dagger down on his neck. He escaped from Eco's clutches and ran for the door, blood spurting between the fingers that clutched his neck.

  We followed him outside, dazed by the full light of day. I girded myself for more fighting, but there was no one to be seen. We were alone on a patch of weedy ground in front of a disused stable, surrounded by trees and overgrown farmland.

  "The other one is still in the pit!" said Eco. He ran back inside, lifted the trapdoor single-handed and dropped it shut with a great clang. "Ha! See how you like that! Now you'll tell us where we are and who you work for, you son of a sow!"

  I followed Eco inside, still exhilarated but suddenly weary. "Come, Eco. We'd better hurry. Who knows where the other one went, or if he has more friends close by? We're not out of danger yet."

  "But, Papa-"

  "Eco, the fellow is dead."

  "No!" Eco peered down into the dim pit. The man had landed in a convoluted heap that no living person could contrive. Still, Eco was unconvinced until a large rat went scurrying over the fellow's head.

  "Papa, you lolled him?"

  "No. The fall broke his neck. It happened in the blink of an eye."

  "Too bad. He should have suffered!"

  I shook my head, unable to agree. The fellow had never shown us any cruelty, as many men would have, given such power over others. He had been our servant, in fact, bringing us food and disposing of our wastes. Our argument was not with him.