Murder on the Appian Way (58 page)

"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."

"No, Clodia. You look beautiful. Unspeakably beautiful."

She reached for my hand. I looked into her eyes for a moment, then had to look away. I watched the bathers, in the way that she watched them, abstractly and without really seeing them, only their movements and the play of light on their wet flesh. Then the abstract became concrete. I suddenly recognized one of them.

"By Hercules!"

"What is it, Gordianus?"

"One of your men, the one with the red face ... and ice blue eyes ..." The man was diving for the leather ball. He screwed his face up, just as he did on that night he confronted me on the Palatine Hill after ransacking my house.

"You know him?" said Clodia.

"He was one of the looters who plundered my house and wrecked my statue of Minerva. One of the men who murdered my slave, Belbo."

"I wouldn't be surprised. The fellow's a former gladiator. Clodius owned him, then freed him so he could go on the grain dole. Since then he's been passed around the family as a bodyguard. He caused some sort of trouble among my nephew's slaves. I ended up with him only a few days ago. They thought I should like looking at him, I suppose. But you say he wrecked your house?"

"And killed a man very dear to me." "I see. What shall we do about it?"

"I have no proof. No one was there to see him do it, except his friends. Maybe it was one of his friends who killed Belbo. Perhaps he's innocent, though he seemed to be the leader."

"Why worry over details? This isn't a court. We both know his sort. I'm sure he's done something or other he deserves to die for. Shall I take care of it for you, Gordianus?"

"What do you mean?"

"I could have the fellow drowned, right here and now. It would only take a word to my chief bodyguard A man like that would put up quite a struggle, I imagine, but between my bodyguards and litter bearers there are enough strong men out there to hold him down for however long it takes. You could have the pleasure of watching. Shall I give the order?"

"You're serious, aren't you?" .

"Yes. But only if you want it. Shall I give the order?"

I considered it. In a single afternoon, I had been invited by Fausta Cornelia to take part in an orgy and by Clodia to watch a man die by my order. Such opportunities were the prerogatives of kings and emperors; why should I refuse? Perhaps I had never really known the meaning of justice or truth, but once I thought I did, and the illusion had comforted me. Now everything had changed All my bearings had slipped out of sight. I felt dizzy and disoriented. Was the world spinning out of control, or was it only me?

"No," I finally said. "Your brother is dead, and so is Belbo, and no amount of killing will bring them back. The river flows only forwards."

Clodia smiled ruefully. "Very well. The fellow shall never know how close he came to being drowned like a dog. But I'll remember what you told me. I shall keep a close eye on him from now on."

"Clodia-"

"Yes."

"Hold out your hand."

She did so with an arched eyebrow, expecting some trick. I placed her brother's ring on her open palm.

She sighed, shuddered, sobbed, and caught a breath to steady herself. "Where did you find it?"

"If I say that I found it lying beside the Appian Way, will you be satisfied?"

She looked at the ring for a long time, with an expression of such tenderness that I realized how foolish I was to think that I could hurt her. What could she feel for me, or for any man, compared to what she had felt for her brother?

"Why did you bring it to me? Why not to Fulvia? She's his widow."

"Yes, but Fulvia has already moved on. She's planning her next marriage — and perhaps the next marriage after that. She's looking towards the future, not the past"

"But Publius's son, his little boy ..."

"If you think your nephew should have the ring, I leave that decision to you. I decided to return it to the one who loved him most."

She closed her hand tightly around it and shut her eyes. A single tear ran down her cheek.

I turned and retraced my footsteps in the soft earth, going back the way I had come. At the corner of the tent I turned back. She blinked her eyes open. "I almost forgot." I said. "I want to invite you to a wedding."

"A wedding? In your family? Don't tell me it's your daughter, Diana!"

"I'm afraid so."

"But she's only a child."

"Not any longer. Time flies."

"But I shouldn't come. I'm not related, and hardly close enough to the family. It would be most unconventional"

"All the better. I suspect it will be a most unconventional marriage."

"Your daughter is following after her father, then."

The thought gave me pause. "Farewell, Clodia."

"Farewell, Gordianus." She gave me a parting glance, then leaned back among the pillows, holding the ring to her breast.

I walked back across the meadow to Davus. Clodia had it exactly right: Diana was following after me. They were all following after me.

If only I knew where I was going ...

If only I had the vaguest idea of what was in store for any of us ...

Davus was resting in the shade of an oak tree. At my approach he rose to his feet and brushed himself off "If only I knew where I was going," I muttered, thinking aloud.

"But, Master, I should have thought that was obvious."

"What?"

He smiled. "We're going home now, aren't we?" I heaved a sigh of great relief "Yes, Davus. Home!"

NOTE

The sources for the murder of Clodius and Milo's trial are remarkable in themselves. The text of Cicero's oration for Milo which has come down to us—most likely an idealized version of the speech he intended to give, prettied up for publication—gives us one view of events, and a clearly prejudiced and deliberately skewed one at that. If it was all we had to go on, it would still make a great story, but we should have no idea of what really happened on the Appian Way.

(And if Cicero had been able to deliver the speech intact, things might have turned out differently — such, at least, was the substance of a bitter jest by Milo. When Cicero proudly sent him a copy, Milo remarked that it was a good thing the orator had not been able to deliver such a stirring speech — otherwise Milo would still be back in Rome, and not in exile in Massilia enjoying the excellent mullets.)

Fortunately, in the next century the scholar Quintus Asconius Pedianus wrote some study guides for his sons to use when reading Cicero's orations, and one of these surviving commentaries analyses the Pro Milone. It reads today as a sort of precursor to the "true crime" genre. Asconius gives us fascinating details about the desperate parliamentary manoeuvres and frantic damage control by both sides in the wake of Clodius's death. He describes the nuts-and-bolts conduct of the trial, including the selection of the jury. Most important, he gives us an account of the murder completely at odds with the one Cicero puts forth.