Murder on the Appian Way (6 page)

"But where's the inconsistency, Papa?" Diana looked at me curiously, as did her mother. I almost thought they were making fun of me.

"It seems to me that a woman should grieve in private and show restraint in public, not - the other way around," I said.

Bethesda and Diana looked at each other and wrinkled their brows. "What would be the point of that?" said Bethesda.

"It's not a matter of having a point -"

"Husband!" Bethesda was shaking her head. "Of course Fulvia didn't want to show her grief to you, a stranger, in the intimacy of her home, and especially not in front of Clodia. She comported herself with dignity to make her mother proud, to show her little daughter how to be strong, to confound her weeping sister-in-law. And for the sake of her husband as well, since you Romans believe that the lemur of a dead man may linger for a while in the vicinity of its vacant corpse. So for you she put on her most dignified manner.

But the crowd outside, that was a different matter. Fulvia wanted to stir them up, as much as she could, just as her husband had stirred them up so many times before. She could hardly do that by standing next to his bloody corpse and behaving like a statue, could she?"

"Then you think her display of public grief was calculated and disingenuous?"

"Calculated, most certainly. But disingenuous? Not at all. She simply chose the most suitable time and place to release the grief that was inside her all along."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure you're making sense. I'd rather try to figure out what sort of schemes the politicians in the anteroom were up to."

Bethesda and Diana shrugged in unison to show that the subject bored them. "Politicians are usually too obvious to be very interesting," said Bethesda. "Of course, it may be that I've misjudged Clodia and Fulvia. I wasn't there to see with my own eyes. I can only go by what you've told me."

"Am I such an unreliable observer?" I raised an eyebrow. "Men do call me the Finder, you know."

"The thing is," said Bethesda, oblivious to my point, "that one never quite knows what some people are really up to. Especially with a woman as complicated as Clodia, or Fulvia. How does one ever know what she really thinks, really feels? What she really wants?" Bethesda exchanged a thoughtful look with Diana. Simultaneously they lifted spoonfuls of porridge to their lips, then abruptly lowered them as Belbo came into the room.

For many years the straw-haired giant of a fellow had been my private bodyguard, and had saved my life on more than one occasion. He was still as strong as an ox, but as lumbering as one, too; as loyal as a hound, but no longer fit for the chase. I still entrusted my life to him on a daily basis -1 let him shave my neck - but I couldn't rely on him to protect me from daggers in the Forum. What does one do with a loyal bodyguard who has outlasted his usefulness? Belbo could read only a little and do only the most rudimentary sums. He had no special skills at carpentry or gardening. Aside from performing an occasional feat of prodigious strength — toting a heavy sack of grain or lifting a massive wardrobe single-handed - he served me well enough as a doorkeeper, a job which chiefly required him to sit in a warm patch of sunlight in the atrium for most of the day. Lethargy suited his bovine nature and enhanced that equable temperament which strangers often mistook for stupidity. Belbo's wits might be slow, but they were not dim. It was his way to smile at a joke after everyone else finished laughing. He seldom grew angry, even when provoked. He even more rarely showed fear. As he stepped into the dining room, however, his oxlike eyes were wide with alarm. "Belbo, what's wrong?"

"Out in the street, master. In front of the house. I think you'd better come see."

As soon as I stepped into the garden at the centre of the house, I heard the noise carried on the open air — an indistinct mingling
of cries and stamping feet. It sounded like a riot. I hurried through the garden and the atrium to the foyer at the front of the house. Belbo pulled open the little sliding panel in the door and stepped aside to let me press my eye to the peephole.

I saw a blur of movement from right to left — a mob rushing by, all dressed in black. I heard the roar of the crowd but couldn't make sense of it.

"Who are they, Belbo? What's going on?" I stared through the peephole. Suddenly a figure broke away from the mob and ran directly up to the door. He put his mouth to the peephole and began screaming, "We'll burn it down! Burn it down!" He banged his fists against the door. I jerked back, my heart pounding. Through the peephole I saw the man step back, his face frozen in a maniacal grin. Even with the door between us, I shivered. Then, just as suddenly as he had rushed up, the man turned and rushed away, disappearing into the mob.

"What in Hades is going on?"

"I wouldn't advise going outside to find out," said Belbo earnestly.

I thought for a moment. "We'll go up on the roof to have a look. Fetch the ladder, Belbo, and bring it to the garden!"

A few moments later I found myself settled precariously on the slanting tiles along the front roof of my house. From here I had a view not only of the street below, but of the Forum beyond, with its temples and public spaces clustered close together in the valley between the Palatine, and Capitoline Hills. Just below me the mob continued to surge through the street. Some of them ran straight on. Others broke away and took the shortcut called the Ramp that leads down to the Forum and empties into a narrow space between the House of the Vestals and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Some of the rioters carried sticks and clubs. A few brandished daggers, in open defiance of the law that forbids such weapons within the city.

And though it was well after daybreak, a few carried torches. The flames whipped and snapped through the cold air.

The mob eventually thinned, but was soon followed by an even larger, slower group of mourners. If it was a funeral procession, it was certainly a strange one. Where were the mummers doing parodies of the dead man to lighten the mood? Where were the wax effigies of the dead man's ancestors, taken from their places of honour in his foyer to witness his passage to join them on the other side? Where were the hired mourners, weeping and clawing at their tangled hair -indeed, where was there a woman to be seen?

But there was music — mournful horns, wailing flutes and shivering tambourines, making a noise that set my teeth on edge. And there was a body - the corpse of Clodius carried upon a wooden bier festooned with black cloth. He was still naked except for a loincloth, and still filthy and smeared with dried blood.

Some of the mourners broke away to take the Ramp down to the Forum, but the main procession with the corpse of Clodius kept to the street in front of my house, which runs along the crest of the Palatine. They were making a slow, deliberate circuit of the hill, I realized, passing by the houses of the rich and powerful in a sombre procession, letting his friends and foes alike take a final look at the man who had caused so much disruption to the orderly life of the Republic.

A few houses farther on, their course would take them directly past the front door of the man who had been Clodius's most implacable enemy in the Senate and the courts. Clodius had made himself the champion of the lowly, of foot soldiers and freedmen; always against him there had been Cicero, the loyal spokesman for those who proudly called themselves the Best People. The funeral procession seemed orderly, but in the mob that preceded it I had seen men with daggers and torches. I held my breath, wondering what might happen when they reached Cicero's house.

When I looked towards Cicero's house, I saw that I was not alone in my apprehension. Intervening houses and trees blocked my view of the street, but of the house itself I could clearly see some shuttered windows in the upper storey and a portion of the roof. Two figures were perched there, as Belbo and I were perched on my root peering over the edge at the street below. By the glare of the slanting morning light I instandy discerned the thick-necked, grim-jawed silhouette of Cicero. Crouching close behind him, reaching out to make sure that his master did not lean too far, was the slighter silhouette of Cicero's lifelong secretary, Tiro. They were still for a long moment, as if frozen by the cold morning air; then Cicero reached back for Tiro's shoulder. They put their heads together and anxiously conferred. From the way they drew back and craned their necks, trying to see but not be seen, I gathered that the bizarre funeral cortege was passing directly below them. The dirge of the horns and flutes became shriller, the shivering of the distant tambourines more manic. Intent on the spectacle below, Cicero and Tiro took no notice of my scrutiny.

The procession apparently came to a halt before Cicero's house. Cicero bobbed his head forwards and back, like a nervous quail. I could imagine his dilemma — he was afraid to take his eyes away from the mob, and yet the merest glimpse of him might incite them to violence. Horns blared, flutes trilled, tambourines rattled.

At last the cortege moved on and the dirge faded away.

Cicero and Tiro sat back, sighing with relief. Then Cicero winced and gripped his stomach. As the heel to Achilles, so the belly to Cicero; his breakfast had turned against him. He rose, still crouching, and moved crablike up the roof with Tiro following behind. Tiro turned his head and saw us watching. He touched his master's sleeve and spoke. Cicero paused and turned his face towards us. I raised my hand in neighbourly greeting. Tiro waved back. Cicero stayed motionless for a moment, then clutched his stomach and hurried on, disappearing over the edge of the roof.

Meanwhile, below us in the street, more men in black kept running by in parties of two and three, stragglers rushing to catch up. Most of them took the Ramp. I tried to see where they were all headed, but my view of the Forum was mostly of beaten copper roofs gleaming in the sunlight; every now and again I could catch a glimpse of tiny figures moving in the spaces between. They all seemed to be gathering before the Senate House at the far end of the Forum, where the sheer rock face of the Capitoline Hill forms a natural wall.

From my position, I had a clear view of the front of the Senate House. Broad marble steps led up to the massive bronze doors, which were closed. I could see only a tiny portion of the open space in front of the Senate House, but this included a clear view of the Rostra, the raised platform from which speakers address the populace. Already the space between the Rostra and the Senate House was filled with a crush of black-clad mourners.

The funeral dirge, which for a while had faded out of hearing, now returned, rising from the Forum. Echoing up from the valley, the harsh music sounded more confused and discordant than ever.

Suddenly it was overwhelmed by a great shout from the crowd. The body of Clodius had arrived. A little later I saw the bier as it was carried onto the Rostra and propped up for the crowd to see, just as it had been displayed on the steps of Clodius's house the night before. What a tiny thing it looked, and yet even at such a distance there was still something shocking about that glimpse of naked flesh amid so many black-clad mourners and so much cold, chiselled stone.

A speaker mounted the Rostra. I could hear only faint echoes of his voice. As he paced back and forth across the Rostra, waving his arms, pointing to the corpse of Clodius and raising his fists, the crowd broke into a thunderous roar. From that point on the noise of the mob rose and fell but never quite subsided.

"What's going on?"

I turned my head; startled. "Diana, go back down the ladder at once!"

"Why? Is it dangerous up here?" "Very. Your mother would have a fit."

"Oh, I hardly think so. She held the ladder for me. But I think she's afraid to come up herself." "As well she might be."

"And how about you, Papa? I should think an old fellow like you would be more likely to lose his balance than I would be."

"How did I ever come to have such an impertinent child?"

"I'm not impertinent. Just curious. It's like the siege of Troy, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Like Jupiter up on Mount Ida, watching the battlefield down below. They're all so tiny. It makes one feel... godlike."

"Does it? Jupiter could send down thunderbolts or messengers with wings. And he could hear what was being said. Having a view hardly makes me feel godlike. Quite the opposite. It makes me feel powerless, watching from a distance like this."

"You could go down and join them."

"Put myself at the mercy of that mob? There's no telling what they might do next -" "Papa, look!"

Like a storm-churned flood, the crowd seemed suddenly to overflow the broad square in front of the Rostra, surging in wave after wave onto the steps and terraces of the surrounding temples and public buildings.

"Papa, look! The Senate House!"

The broad steps were inundated by the mob, which rose like a black flood tide to lash against the tall bronze doors. Bolted from within, they stood against the tide, but soon I began to hear a low, thudding, repetitive boom. It was hard to see exactly what was happening, but the mob seemed to be assaulting the doors of the Senate House with some sort of makeshift battering ram.

"Impossible," I said. "Incredible! What are they thinking of? What do they want?"

All at once the doors gave way. A moment later a cheer of triumph rose from the crowd. I looked back to the Rostra. The speaker was still ranting, striding back and forth and exhorting the mob with wild gestures, but the body of Clodius had disappeared. I frowned; puzzled, then caught sight of the naked body on its black-draped bier proceeding with odd, jerky movements towards the steps of the Senate House. It seemed that the mob was passing the bier from hand to hand above their heads. I suddenly had a vision of the mob as a colony of insects, and the corpse of Clodius as their queen. I shivered and felt an intimation of vertigo. With one hand I reached for Diana, putting my arm around her shoulder, and with the other I held more firmly to the tiles of the roof.

The bier reached the foot of the Senate House steps, stalled for a moment, then tilted upward and began to ascend. The mass of the crowd, able to see the body again, produced another loud roar of mingled triumph and despair. The bier reached the top of the steps and was propped upright. A man stepped up beside it, waving a burning torch. He seemed to be giving a speech, though it was hard to imagine that the roaring crowd could hear him any better than I could. Even at such a distance, I was almost certain that the speaker was Sextus Cloelius, Clodius's wild-eyed lieutenant, the man who had spoken of riots and revenge against Milo the previous night.