Murder on the Appian Way (50 page)

He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. He glanced at Tiro, who watched him expectantly with furrowed brows. "I wrote the note to your wife, yes."

"What was your part? Did you know from the beginning? Did you plan the attack on me?"

He made a face, like a man who must step into something soft and smelly. "When we learned that you had set out for Bovillae, Milo became convinced that you had become a danger to him. It was all he talked about for days. Who knew what you would find out? For whom were you really working? I tried to dissuade him, but Milo is a stubborn man. He became determined to remove you —"

"To kill me, you mean?"

"To prevent you from returning to Rome. Yes, his first intention was to have you killed. I forbade it. Do you hear me, Gordianus? I forbade him to kill you and your son. I reminded him of the men he was keeping locked up at his villa in Lanuvium, the witnesses his men had captured on the Appian Way. If he could hold those men prisoner, then why not you and your son? I insisted that you be spared, do you understand? Milo compromised, and agreed merely to detain you, and only until the crisis was over. Then you and Eco would be released unharmed."

"The men who escaped from Lanuvium said that Milo had made up his mind to kill them."

"That was only a rumour. Even if it was true, it had nothing to do with you. I had Milo's word that you would come to no harm."

"Milo's word!"

"Did you come to harm? Were you badly treated? There, you see! He kept his word to me. Even so, I felt deeply concerned for your family, knowing how dear you are to them, how much they would miss you and worry about you. I was not so hard and cold that I could ignore that. So I wrote that note to your wife, to allay her fears. I wrote it with my own hand, and had it delivered by an illiterate slave. I should have known you would find me out in the end, Gordianus. Nothing escapes you! But it was the right thing to do. I can't regret having done it, even now."

He stood erect with his chin up, like an officer whose honour had been impugned over an act of bravery. I gaped at him. "You're actually proud of yourself, aren't you? Proud because you browbeat Milo into kidnapping me instead of murdering me -"

"I saved your life, Gordianus!"

"And proud of yourself for writing two lines to my wife instead of setting me free."

He sighed at my obstinacy. "Sometimes, Gordianus, in defence of liberty, actions which might otherwise be reprehensible become not only justified but unavoidable."

I shook my head. "Tiro, did you hear that? Are you copying it down? Surely your master can use that in his speech tomorrow!"

Cicero pressed his fingertips together. "Gordianus, some day you will reflect on this episode and realize that you were called upon to make a sacrifice for the good of the state. It may have been a misjudgment on Milo's part, thinking he had to get you out of the way for a short while. You should be flattered that he thought you so dangerous! But consider the greater context. Ultimately, it is a good thing — an exceedingly good thing— that Clodius is dead, and it will be an unmitigated disaster if Milo's enemies succeed in sending him into exile."

"A disaster for Milo, you mean."

"Yes! And a disaster for me - and for anyone who cares about preserving Rome as a republic. We need men like Milo, and Cato, and yes, like myself. There are none of us to spare! You've dealt with Pompey now. You're acquainted with Caesar. Do you really wish to leave eveiything up to them? If it comes to that, if all the good men are picked off one by one and the power of the Senate dwindles to nothing, and Caesar and Pompey are the only men left standing, how long do you think their partnership will last? Can you imagine another civil war, Gordianus? You're old enough to remember Marius and Sulla. How much more terrible would it be this time, with the whole world in flames? Who will be left to pick up the pieces?"

He bowed his head, as if the hour suddenly weighed on him.

"Everything I do, everything, is to avert that course of events. Consider that, Gordianus, and then consider this little thing, this little injustice that Milo has done you, that you were detained for a few days of your life. Do you wish to be repaid somehow? Is it restitution that you want? Would that satisfy you? Or can you make the effort to see the greater picture and to arrive at some sense of proportion about your part in it? This trial is not just about Milo and Clodius. It's about the future of the Republic. If the truth must be bent, if you and your family must suffer a bit in the name of that cause, then so be it!"

He lifted his head and stared at me steadily, waiting for my reaction.

" 'The beauty, the power of words!' " I finally said, mocking him. "Curse the gods who gave us oratory! And curse the clever men like you who make a travesty of words like liberty and justice! This matter is not finished between us, Marcus Cicero. As for Milo, hopefully my grievance with him will be settled for me, when the court decides his fate tomorrow."

I turned to leave, then looked back at Tiro. He had remained silent and averted his eyes during the whole exchange. "Did you know of this?" I said.

When Tiro hesitated, Cicero answered for him. "Tiro knew nothing about the kidnapping. Milo and I never discussed it in his presence. The fact is, I didn't trust him to keep his mouth shut about it. Tiro has always had a soft spot for you, Gordianus. Even I weakened, and wrote that note to your wife. Tiro might have been even more foolish. He knew nothing."

I stared at Tiro, who still would not look me in the eye. "So you deceived Tiro as well. I can believe that. He's not the actor you are, Cicero; his surprise and relief when we met on the Flaminian Way were too genuine to be a pretence. But Tiro - Tiro, look at me! You must have suspected something. Who else but Milo had a reason to kidnap us? How could Cicero not have known?"

Tiro bit his lower hp. "The thought did occur to me. But I simply didn't ask. I suppose I didn't really want to know. There's been a great deal else on my mind ..."

"Tell me just one thing, then, Tiro. Only one thing, and the absolute truth. Will you do that for me?"

Tiro looked at me rather forlornly.

"This speech for Milo - is it as good as Cicero claims it is? Or is that only his vanity speaking? Tell me what you really think."

"The truth, Gordianus?" "Nothing else."

"Cicero's speech for Milo is ..." Tiro sighed. "Cicero has never written a better speech. No one has. That is my honest opinion. If anything can save Milo, this is the speech to do it. The jurors will weep. It will be Cicero's finest hour."

This was not what I wanted to hear. May the gods help us all, I thought, as I hurried from the room and left them to go about their work.

As I made my way home, some of Cicero's phrases kept ringing in my head, try as I might to shut them out. All of it had been nonsense, of course, but some had been more nonsensical than the rest. I might argue that neither Milo nor his men were ultimately responsible for Clodius's death, at least not technically. That may well be the case, as I'm sure you discovered for yourself in your investigations — However, to argue for Milo's outright innocence, I would have to introduce some rather arcane reasoning ..."

What in Hades could he have meant by that? I almost wished I had kept a cooler head and asked him; there was no turning back now. He had probably meant nothing at all, I told myself but was simply spinning words, filling me with doubt, throwing dust in my eyes, just as he would try to do to the jurors in the morning.

XXXII

On the fourth and final day of Milo's trial I awoke to birdsong in the garden. New flowers had bloomed overnight. Bees and butterflies were already at work, doting on the blossoms. I was tempted to forget the trial and stay home. Why not spend the day enjoying the warm sunshine of Aprilis in my garden? But the plaintive eyes of the staring, broken Minerva would not let me forget what was about to transpire in the Forum.

Davus and a fellow bodyguard had risen long before cockcrow to go down with folding chairs to save places for us. It was a good thing, for I had never seen the Forum so thronged with spectators. By order of Pompey, all taverns were closed for the day. Pompey no doubt intended to head off the threat of drunken rioters, but the radical tribunes must have been pleased for their own reasons; with the taverns closed, even their least civic-minded supporters had nowhere better to be than in the Forum attending the trial. Despite the crush, Davus had doggedly held on to our seats near the front of the crowd.

Dominating everything were Pompey's troops. Wherever there was an elevated place - temple steps or a bit of wall or ramp or pedestal - the soldiers had already occupied it the night before. A ring of troops completely encircled the Forum At the various points of entry they pulled aside perfectly peaceable citizens to search for concealed weapons. Pompey himself was said to be in his stronghold in the treasury building, from which he would not stir until a verdict was announced. I felt as if I had awakened in some other city that morning, a place ruled by a military autocrat - except that autocrats do not allow public trials. There was a sense of confusion and uncertainty in the air, almost of unreality.

And yet, everything proceeded smoothly. Milo and Cicero had shown up before most of the crowd, travelling in a plain, closed litter so that their arrival went unnoticed, which was no doubt as they wished it They stayed out of sight in the litter, ringed by bodyguards, until it was almost time for the trial to begin. The three prosecutors arrived on foot to a great deal of cheering, surrounded by an entourage of secretaries and bodyguards. The officials of the court brought out three large urns; these contained the wooden balls on which each potential juror had written his name. Balls were chosen by lot until eighty-one jurors had been selected, among them Marcus Cato, I noticed. After the speeches by the prosecution and the defence, each side would be allowed to remove fifteen more jurors, leaving fifty-one men to decide the verdict.

Domitius called the court to order. The prosecutors commenced with their arguments at once.

As Cicero had predicted, their three orations seemed unduly short, more like synopses than full-blown speeches. They were potent, nonetheless. In typical fashion, the prosecutors divided various aspects of the case between them, according to their skills and dispositions.

I knew little about Valerius Nepos, but I had heard that his forte was narrative, and so was not surprised that he gave the opening argument. He described the actual incident with dramatic flourish, using the full range of his ringing voice and dwelling on gruesome details to elicit groans and cries of outrage from the spectators. His final lament was so full of grief that it seemed all he could do to keep from tearing out his hair. Nepos would have made quite a performer on the stage, I thought, bringing blind Oedipus or the tormented Ajax to life.

Marc Antony, the tactician, delivered the middle speech. He made the case that Milo had deliberately plotted to murder Clodius, citing evidence that Milo had spies among Clodius's slaves and going over and over the complicated chronology of Milo's and Clodius's movements on the day of the murder. Antony was the right man for a speech that dwelled, by necessity, on such a concentration of details. A more emotional speaker like Nepos, wailing over timetables, would have risked looking absurd. A staid orator like Pompey would have put his listeners to sleep. Antony's blend of soldierly gruffness with an innate sincerity of purpose, kept the jurors' full attention.

Appius Claudius, the dead man's nephew, delivered the emotional finale, a eulogy full of pathos. Seemingly overcome by grie£ he was often choked with tears and had to struggle to regain his composure. In a ringing summation, he made proud references to the greatness of Clodius's forebears and to the poignant irony that he should have met such a brutal death on the famous road which Appius Claudius Caecus had built and along which stood the tombs and shrines of so many members of his noble family.

During these speeches, I looked to see the reactions of Milo and Cicero. Most defendants bring a horde of family members to cluster around them during the trial, but Milo sat alone, his arms tightly crossed. Granted, his parents were dead, but where was his wife? It would count against him that Fausta Cornelia was nowhere to be seen during her husband's ordeal. Given her reputation, I could imagine the sort of jokes the Clodians would come up with to explain her absence.

And what was Milo thinking, to show up at his own trial in a snow-white toga without even a loose stitch, much less a tear in it? His hair looked freshly dipped and combed, and his jaw was so clean-shaven that he must have seen his barber that very morning before he left his house. I had to shake my head at such audacity. Even the always sardonic Caelius, at his trial, had had the sense (drummed into him by Cicero) to wear an old, threadbare toga and to look at least a bit dishevelled, and Caelius's parents had shown up in torn clothes with their eyes red from crying and baggy from lack of sleep. A Roman defendant is expected to look as wretched as he possibly can, in order to play upon the sympathy of the jurors. This is often merely a formality, but everyone goes along with it out of respect for legal tradition. By showing up looking as if he were paying court to a widow or posing for his portrait, Milo was deliberately thumbing his nose not only at the jury but at the whole judicial process.

Perhaps this was one of the things on his advocate's mind that day. Cicero looked uncommonly distracted, and completely transformed from the previous night. Where was his excitement, his ebullience? His eyes were shifty, his jaw tight, and he gave a start at every unexpected noise from the crowd. He fiddled with scraps of parchment, scribbled notes on a wax tablet, kept whispering to Tiro, and seemed hardly to listen to the prosecutors. Only once did he seem to come to life, during Antony's speech. Antony was trying to imply that Milo paused to water his horses in Bovillae to kill time while he waited for a report that Clodius had left his villa and was on his way, so that Milo could be sure to pass Clodius on the road in order to stage a deliberate attack on him. To frame his accusation, Antony needed to establish the exact hour at which the incident took place, and stressed the point by repeatedly asking, "When was Clodius killed? When, I ask you - when was Clodius killed?"