"No?" I looked towards the door to the bath. I could still hear an occasional splash and the sound of voices.
"If Milo were here, do you think I'd be taking a bath with two of his gladiators?"
She looked to see if her candour would shock me. I did my best to keep a blank expression.
"I realize that Milo must be very busy during his last days in Rome," I said. "It isn't absolutely necessary that I see him face to face, but I do want to make sure that he receives this." I held up the little scroll with Pompey's seal.
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, not another bill! Thank the gods I kept my own income, even if it is in my brother's name." She took the scroll from me and walked down a short hallway. She jiggled a good deal behind as well, I noticed. We came to a cluttered room filled with documents. "My husband's study," she announced, with an air of distaste. "From here, he was going to run the Republic. What a joke that turned out to be! I suppose there'll never be another man like my father, a real man who can bring this unruly town to heel."
"I'm not so sure of that," I said quietly, thinking of Pompey, and of Caesar.
She didn't hear. "This is the latest pile of bills," she said, indicating a tall box overflowing with scrolls and scraps of parchment. "Shall we toss yours on top? There. But don't be surprised if it gets moved to the bottom, or lost altogether."
"Who's attending to sorting out all these bills? Is your husband doing it himself?"
"Gods, no! Milo's a wreckage; he can hardly sort out which shoe to put on first in the morning. One peek inside this room and he's reduced to a blubbering baby. No, this will all be dealt with after he leaves. Cicero will take care of it. Or Tiro will, I should say; Tiro is a wonder at organizing things."
"I see. Here, then, let's put my request aside from all the rest. If you would, tell Cicero to honour it first. Tell him that Gordianus the Finder insists. Cicero will know why. So will Tiro."
She looked at me wryly. "And you think I don't? I know who you are, Finder. I'm more aware of my husband's affairs than you seem to think. He was quite bent on killing you, you know. It was all he talked about for days."
"Really?" Her candour about her lovers was not nearly as startling as her candour about her husband's plots.
"Oh, yes. Milo considered you to be quite a menace. You should be honoured, I suppose. Of course, towards the end, he was seeing an assassin in every cupboard and a spy behind every bush. You obsessed him for a while. Cicero kept telling him that he was blowing any threat you posed out of all proportion. Cicero said that your reputation was grossly inflated, that you were barely competent, really, and that Milo should stop worrying about you."
"How kind of Cicero."
"He was trying to protect you, you fool. But Milo was determined to see you dead, in a cold sweat about it. In the end Cicero made him agree to a compromise, and Milo simply had you abducted But you must be as clever and persevering as he thought — you escaped before the trial came up. By Hercules, what a fright you must have given Cicero when you popped up on the road right in front of him!" She emitted a short, barking laugh.
"I only wish I could have appreciated the humour at the time."
"Can't we all say that, in retrospect? If only I'd known that marrying Milo would turn into such a joke! And that horrible day on the Appian Way, when I thought I was living through a nightmare, it was really all a grotesque farce from beginning to end. The cruellest irony of all was that Milo never intended to kill Clodius. The fight broke out on its own, and when Milo sent his men after Clodius, he ordered them to spare him! The gladiators still swear that they didn't touch Clodius at the inn."
"Is that a fact?"
"Do you doubt it? Come, I'll let them tell you the story themselves." She took me back to her room. "Boys! You can come out of the bath now. My visitor has promised not to bite you."
First one appeared, then the other; the two of them could not possibly have fitted through the door at once. They wore-loincloths but were otherwise naked and still damp from their bath, two great steaming masses of hairy flesh, each of them twice the size of an ordinary man. I noticed that they were nicked with little scars here and there, but were mostly unmarked, as one might expect of gladiators who had never lost a match. They moved with surprising lightness and grace considering their bulk. Unlike Fausta, nothing shook or jiggled when they walked; for all their fleshiness, their muscles were as solid as marble.
I winced to see their famously ugly faces so close. "Eudamus and Birria," I whispered.
They walked across the room with supreme nonchalance, pushed aside the diaphanous drapery and lay down side by side on Fausta's sleeping couch. The frame groaned and sagged under their weight.
"My husband intends to take them with him to Massilia," said Fausta wistfully. "He'll need protection, of course. But gods, I shall miss the two of them!"
"I take it that you don't intend to accompany your husband into exile?"
"Follow Milo to Massilia, to live among Greeks and Gauls and washed-up Roman windbags? I had sooner live out my days on Milo's pig farm down in Lanuvium."
I looked at Eudamus and Birria warily. "Are you sure they can talk?"
"It seems almost too much to expect, doesn't it, given all their other talents? But yes, they can actually speak — though it's Birria who does all the talking. Eudamus is the shy one, because he's so much prettier, I suppose." The less repulsive of the two made a simpering smile and actually blushed. The uglier one wrinkled his nose and grunted. "Boys, this is Gordianus. I was telling him a few things about the day that Clodius died, and he didn't believe me."
"Do you want us to tear his head off his shoulders?"
"No, Birria. Perhaps some other time. Do you remember how the fight started that day?"
"Of course." Birria crossed his arms behind his head, showing off biceps as big as his head. "We met that fool Clodius on the road, which might have been trouble right off, but we passed without a hitch, everything as smooth as silk. But the fool couldn't let the opportunity pass to shout an insult at us at the last moment."
"And you lost your temper, didn't you?" Fausta commiserated.
"I did. I threw my spear at him. I meant it to whizz by his head, but he made a move and it hit his shoulder." Birria laughed. "Knocked him clean off his horse, and I didn't even mean to. Then it was Mars in charge and every man for himself. We got the best of them. Pretty soon they were running like rabbits into the woods and down the road."
"Then the master sent you after them," prompted Fausta.
"After he threw his tantrum," agreed Birria.
"And what were his instructions?"
Birria stretched on the couch. His legs reached so far over the end that he was almost able to touch his toes to the floor. "The master said, 'Kill all the rest if you have to, but take Clodius alive. Don't harm a hair on his head, or I'll send the lot of you off to the mines.' So we chased the fool down to Bovillae, where he was holed up inside the inn. We had to go in and drag his men out, one by one. The stupid innkeeper got in the way; Eudamus took care of him. We had the situation under control, and all that was left was to drag Clodius out of the inn by the scruff of his neck. Then that fellow Philemon and his friends came along. He pitched a fit, shouted some threats and shook his fist at us, but as soon as we took two steps towards him he let out a squeal and turned tail. He and his friends scattered all over the place. So we went after them. What else could we do? Eudamus chased one, I chased another, and all our men followed along. You'd think that someone would have had the sense to stay and keep a watch on Clodius, but no one thought to." He shrugged, bunching a great mass of muscles around his oxlike neck. "Everything was crazy that day."
I shook my head at the simplemindedness of it. "And when you finally rounded up the witnesses and came back — "
"Clodius was gone."
I nodded. "Because Sextus Tedius had already come along and dispatched him to Rome in his litter, while you were off chasing Philemon…"
"Yes, but we didn't know
that," protested Birria. "When we got back to the inn, we couldn't figure out where in Hades Clodius had got to."
"So you argued about it for a while; that was the hushed argument Philemon only half overheard without understanding."
Birria shrugged. "We decided to head back and ask the master what to do. Clodius was wounded. We figured he couldn't get far."
"And on the way, you passed Sextus Tedius, resting below the House of the Vestals, and he saluted you, while his daughter — "
"We just ignored the old senator and hurried back to the master. He took one look at the prisoners, saw that we didn't have Clodius, and threw another tantrum. While he paced up and down we loaded the prisoners into a wagon and sent them on to the master's villa at Lanuvium, along with the mistress. Then the master decided that Clodius would probably make a run back to his villa on the mountain, so that's where we headed."
"But when you got there, you didn't find Clodius."
"We searched everywhere — in the stable, behind the rock piles, all through the house. We started threatening the slaves in charge, the foreman and that fellow Halicor. 'Where's Publius Clodius?' the master kept yelling."
"You were looking for Clodius at the villa — not for his son!"
"That was a dirty lie the Clodians put out afterwards, saying the master went on a hunt for Clodius's little boy. What would we have done with him? We didn't even know the boy was there, and we certainly never saw him. It was Clodius himself we were hunting for. The master was frantic that we couldn't find him. He kept asking us how badly Clodius was wounded. He figured that Clodius must be hiding in the hills-"
"And my dear husband dreaded what would happen next," added Fausta, "now that blood had been spilled and Clodius would be mad for revenge. Milo didn't know that Clodius was dead until he sneaked back into the city the next day. Then of course we heard the story about how Sextus Tedius had found the body, and we figured out what must have happened."
"Did you really?" I said. "And the next step was for Milo to concoct his own fanciful version of the incident — all that nonsense about Clodius setting an ambush for him."
"It was a good try," said Fausta wistfully. "But there was no way for him to wriggle out of it in the end, was there? Not even with Cicero on his side — and what a mess he made of things! The irony, you see, is that Milo never intended to have Clodius killed, nor to harm his little boy. Once Clodius was wounded — by you, Birria, you very, very naughty boy — Milo simply wanted Clodius to be taken alive, to keep him safe and quiet until we could figure out what to do next. But Philemon drew the men away from the inn. Either Clodius's wounds were worse than everyone thought, or else…"
"Yes?"
"Milo suggested to Cicero that someone else might have actually finished him off."
"How could that have happened?"
"Clodius had plenty of enemies on Mount Alba. He'd stirred up a lot of trouble. Any local person passing by, who happened to see that Clodius was wounded and alone, might have been tempted to take advantage of the situation. And there were reports that Clodius had strangulation marks on his throat-you mentioned them yourself, to Cicero. Eudamus and Birria both swear that they never touched his throat — so where did those marks come from, unless some unknown party throttled Clodius while they were off chasing Philemon? That would explain why Sextus Tedius found him lying dead in the road, when he was still alive in the tavern when Birria and Eudamus took after Philemon." She sighed, sounding more bored than weary. "That was a theory that Milo proposed, anyway, but Cicero said there was no use in pursuing it. 'Why try to convince the jury that you're technically innocent by some convoluted logic, saying your men only wounded Clodius and someone else killed him? They'll never believe it, whether it's true or not. Make no apologies and argue self-defence!' If Philemon hadn't appeared, we might have taken Clodius alive. But
Sextus Tedius showed up at just the wrong moment, and then he sent the body on its way to Rome without our knowing it. Do you grasp the irony, Gordianus?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "More than you know."
Fausta sighed. "All this dwelling on the past is depressing me. You should run along now, Gordianus. I'd just finished my bath when you arrived, and now it's time for my massage." She brightened. "Unless you'd like to join me…"
"I think not."
"Are you sure? Eudamus and Birria give quite an extraordinary massage. Twenty fingers between them — nineteen actually, since Eudamus lost one in a fight — and such power! They could break me in two like a twig, but they leave me feeling as light and airy as a cloud. They could handle two of us as easily as one. It might be rather interesting." The look on her face left no doubt about her meaning.
"And your husband?"
"He won't be back for hours."
"Are you certain?"
"Reasonably certain…"
I remembered Fausta Cornelia's penchant for getting caught in compromising positions, and imagined Milo walking in on the four of us. It was not the kind of confrontation I cared to have with Milo on the eve of his exile, though it might have amused Fausta Cornelia a great deal.
"Alas, I have a final errand I must attend to before the day is done."
She pouted her lips and shrugged. "Regrets, then, Gordianus. Shall I tell my husband that you came by to bid him farewell?" "Please do."
XXXVII
On such a magnificent spring afternoon, with flowers in bloom and the sun spreading warmth from a cloudless sky, I knew where I would find her.
We made our way through the cattle market west of the Palatine and across the old wooden bridge. "Where are we going, Master?" said Davus.
"To the other side of the Tiber. I should have thought that was obvious."
Davus frowned. It was time for me to stop teasing him, I thought. I would not be his master much longer. I would miss the particular relationship that had grown up between us.
"Actually, Davus, we're going to a garden villa on the west bank of the Tiber across from the Field of Mars. A beautiful spot with a rustic little villa and a green meadow surrounded by tall trees, and a strip of land on the riverbank excellent for swimming. I would prefer that you told no one of this visit, not even Eco. And certainly not Bethesda. Can you keep a secret?"
"I should have thought that was obvious, Master," he said with a sigh.
After a while we left the road. We passed beneath a shade-dappled canopy of berry bushes and emerged onto a wide green meadow alive with hovering insects and butterflies. The long villa was to the left, just as I remembered. But she would not stay inside on a day such as this. I told Davus to find a shady place to wait for me and I crossed the meadow, the high grass pulling at my feet. Through a stand of tall trees I glimpsed fleeting patches of sunlight on the river. I also saw her tent on the riverbank with its red and white stripes shivering in the breeze, and nearby the matching red and white stripes of her litter where it had been set down on higher ground If the litter was here, then so was she.
No one noticed my approach; no one was posted to watch. All her litter bearers and bodyguards were down in the river, swimming and splashing each other and playing some sort of game with a leather ball. I came to the tent and circled around to the side which faced the river and the swimmers. All the flaps had been rolled up to let in the breeze and the view. She half sat, half reclined on a high, pillow-strewn couch, swathed in a gown made of some diaphanous golden fabric, with a cup of wine in her hand and a forlorn expression on her face. She looked as if she might be watching a tragic play instead of a group of naked slaves cavorting in the water.
She saw me and gave a start, then recognized me and managed a wan smile.
A handmaiden seated on the rug at the foot of her couch scrambled to her feet as I approached, then looked to her mistress for instructions. At a nod from Clodia, the girl left the tent.
"Gordianus," said Clodia. Her voice was like the languid music of the river. Her scent, of spikenard and crocus-oil, suffused the warm air inside the tent. Her
flesh seemed to glow in the soft filtered light.
"I hurt your feelings the other day," I said.
"Did you?" She turned her eyes back to the bathers.
"I think so. For that, I apologize."
"No need. I'd already forgotten. Pains and pleasures have all been dulled for me, since — " "Since your brother died?"
She lowered her eyes. "The one pain that never grows less sharp." "I suppose you must take some comfort from what happened at the trial."
"I have no taste for trials any more."
"But Milo was punished, and Cicero barely stumbled through his speech."
She laughed softly and nodded. "Yes, I should like to have seen that. But none of this will bring him back to me."
"No. But sometimes people are willing to settle for justice, or revenge."
"I learned my lesson when I tried to take revenge on Marcus Caelius. What use is any of it, in the end?"
I spoke carefully. "Taking vengeance on those who killed him — would that bring you no satisfaction?"
"Why do you keep bringing this up, Gordianus? I have no appetite for revenge." She took a deep breath and exhaled it. "My brother gave a great many people a great many reasons to want him dead. I'm not a fool, or blind; I know the way he was and the life he lived. I loved Publius, more than anything else in the world. There was nothing about him I would have changed. But sooner or later, given the game he played and the rules he broke, a bad end was waiting for him. They're all playing the same game, and I suspect they shall all meet a violent end — Pompey and Caesar, Caelius and Antony… even Cicero. So long as Publius was a player, I had some interest in the contest. But now…" She sighed. "I simply He here and watch my beautiful young men enjoy themselves in the water. I don't even see the young men any more; I watch the water, the way it sparkles and slides off them. The way it flows towards the sea, never stopping, never turning back. It all used to mean something to me, I think, but I can't remember what."
"Are you so miserable, Clodia?"
"Miserable? That seems too strong a word. I seldom weep anymore, or wake up from nightmares about his death. I just feel very tired." She smiled crookedly. "I must look frightful."
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