Under Vesuvius

by John Maddox Roberts

  “And you didn’t— Yes, I know, one learns not to ask. Did you hear anything unusual from the bedroom?”

  “No, Praetor. She said that the master would be at the guild banquet until very late and I might as well retire to my own quarters. It was not a suggestion, Praetor. I know when I am receiving a command, however gently it is put.”

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “Just that my lady seemed—very happy, Praetor.”

  The janitor was of no help at all. He was an elderly Bruttian who was barely able to speak and whose intelligence seemed just about equal to his duties. One doesn’t need much in a slave who does little but open and shut the front door.

  By the time I left it was determined that the sapphire was nowhere in the bedroom.

  “I rather liked the woman,” I told Julia when I returned to our town house. “I am sorry that she is dead.”

  “At this rate,” Antonia observed, “there will be no one left alive to give you any trouble.”

  “The last one still alive will be the killer,” said Marcus helpfully. “That makes it simple, at the very least.”

  “If there’s only one,” I grumbled. “There may be a whole pack of them.”

  “Quadrilla was killed by Gaeto’s murderer,” Julia said. “The method was the same.”

  “Or somebody is copying this homicidal technique to cover up an unconnected murder,” I speculated. “In the bad old days in Rome, when senators were being proscribed, many men used the confusion to settle old scores.”

  “Nonsense,” Julia said. “Quadrilla smuggled a lover home and the lover killed her and took that sapphire.”

  “Why?” Circe queried. “I mean, why take that sapphire, fabulous though it was? There was ten times its value in the box that held her other navel adornments.”

  “The killer was taking a souvenir, a keepsake,” I said.

  “That’s insane,” Julia said.

  “Clearly, this murderer is not quite sane, however clever,” I said. “Gorgo was killed haphazardly, and perhaps the killer did not go to meet her with murder in mind. Gaeto and Quadrilla were killed with an incredible cold-bloodedness. And then there was the bizarre, ritualistic way Charmian’s body was laid out.”

  “Assuming there is just one killer,” Julia said. “If it is just one, and he is not sane, we may never find out his identity.”

  “Why do you say that?” Antonia wanted to know.

  “Because people usually kill from greed or jealousy,” she answered. “A madman does not act from such motives. Do you remember that madman in Lanuvium a few years ago?”

  “Oh, I remember that one!” Antonia said, clapping her hands with delight like a little girl. “Was it twenty or thirty bodies found in his well?”

  “Twenty, I think,” Julia said. “He testified that he heard Pluto calling from the bottom of his well, demanding human sacrifices. He threw one in every full moon for almost two years. Other than that, he seemed like a normal, rational man.”

  “I remember Cato saying that it was a terrible thing to do to a good well,” I said.

  “Our killer may be acting according to motives that make sense to him alone,” Julia said, “and if that is the case, we may never discover who it is or who will die next.”

  “And I have to conduct a trial tomorrow,” I said.

  “Is there no way to delay it?” Julia asked.

  “None,” Hermes said. “Even if the augurs find the omens unpropitious, they’ll just throw Gelon into the local lockup until the praetor can find time to return here, or until the next praetor peregrinus comes down from Rome.”

  “We can’t have that,” I said.

  “Then go to bed,” Julia ordered. “It’s almost sunrise now.”

  “Very well,” I said, suddenly feeling unutterably tired. “But I want to be wakened immediately if those cavalrymen return with some live bandits.”

  13

  The horsemen returned early in the morning, as I was rubbing my bleary eyes and plunging my face into a basin of cold water. I was not in a good mood, and my disposition was not improved by their report.

  I went into the atrium to find Sublicius Pansa, glittering in his polished cuirass and helmet, awaiting me.

  “Praetor!” he cried joyfully. “I am happy to report that the bandits have been scoured out and will menace the district no more.” You’d have thought that he’d conquered the Parthians single-handedly.

  “Excellent. Now where are your prisoners? I want to question them.”

  “Ah, well, Praetor, you see, the boys were very keen to avenge your honor and the honor of Rome. After all, these vile creatures had raised profane hands against a serving praetor, insulting both to Rome, and to—”

  “You didn’t take any alive?” I said, disgusted but not at all surprised. Actually, I was somewhat astonished that they had managed not to get themselves massacred by the bandits.

  “What did you bring me?” I asked, resigned.

  “If you will come this way, Praetor.” He strutted out into the street, where his turma awaited. Besides the cavalrymen there were seven horses draped with corpses. I took a close look but saw no familiar faces. The bandits smelled no prettier dead than they had alive.

  Regilius sat his horse a little aside, looking disgusted. I signaled him to me and he rode over and dismounted.

  “All right. Tell me what happened.”

  “We found three dead while tracking them,” he said. “They’d been wounded in the fight with your lot. Caught up with the rest of them at the foot of the volcano. These twits treated it like stag hunting on their fathers’ estates, whooping and chasing them down with lances. Could’ve got you your prisoners easy enough, if they hadn’t been having so much fun.” He spat on the unoffending pavement. “Found something for you, though.”

  “If so, I am grateful.”

  He led me to a small horse tethered behind the ones carrying the bodies. It was a handsome animal but very tired.

  “This is the one we’ve been looking for. Knew it as soon as I saw their tracks.” He caught my look. “It wasn’t ridden by your murderer. He was a big, ugly brute that was no horseman. That’s one reason it was so easy to ride them down. This is a fine beast, but she shouldn’t have been carrying so much weight. Whoever rode her to the grove and to the slaver’s house was the right weight for her.”

  “So she was pay,” I said. “The murderer gave her as part of the bandits’ fee for getting rid of us.”

  “Makes sense,” Regilius said. “Bad bit of luck, though. I was hoping I’d be able to track her to the bugger’s stable.”

  “It would have been conclusive evidence,” I affirmed. “But our murderer is very good at getting rid of evidence.” How good, I was just beginning to appreciate.

  Although I considered the bandit-hunting expedition to have been a disaster, the townspeople felt otherwise. The sight of the dead bandits put them in a good mood and they hailed the cavalry as if they were conquering heroes. It did not hurt that they were Pompeian forces, Campania being one of Pompey’s strongholds.

  * * *

  In the early morning, the town forum was packed with people come to witness the trial. Not just the town was there but also people from nearby towns and the surrounding villages. They had all come for the previous day’s festival, and were staying on an extra day to see the splashy trial everyone had been talking about for days.

  With my lictors clearing the way before me, I took my seat in the curule chair on the dais. At my nod the day’s proceedings began with sacrifices and the taking of auguries. To my relief, there was no examining the livers of sacrificial animals, for there was little Etruscan influence so far south. Rome, on the very border of Tuscia, has always been plagued with these liver readers. Instead, the local augurs took the omens decently, by observing the flight and feeding of birds and by determining the direction of lightning and thunder. Whatever methods were used, the omens were deemed propitious and we were permitted to procee
d.

  A chorus of hisses and execrations greeted Gelon, who rode in escorted by my own men. If his acquittal depended on crowd approval, he was already a dead man. Beside him rode Tiro. The two had spent the previous day closeted together, preparing the defense. Tiro looked confident, but that is part of a lawyer’s job.

  Next the jury was empaneled, some forty comfortable-looking equites who blandly took frightening oaths before the gods, happy in the knowledge that the gods, too, can be bribed.

  One of my lictors led the witnesses to their benches. There were a good number of these, among them Diocles the priest, some nervous-looking temple servants, and Jocasta. Just before all was arranged, a man wearing a white tunic and the winged red hat of Mercury came running into the forum, holding aloft a little golden caduceus. He had tiny silver wings affixed to his sandals, and the crowd made way for him. He halted before the dais and took a small scroll from the wallet slung over his shoulder.

  “The Temple of Juno the Protector at Cumae sends this to the Praetor Peregrinus Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, holding assizes at Baiae, in accordance with his subpoena.” Hermes took the scroll and tipped the messenger as the crowd muttered, wondering what this might mean. Hermes tucked the scroll into his tunic and returned to my side.

  I held up a hand for silence and received it. I nodded to young Marcus and he stepped forward, a picture of Roman gravitas. Around his arm was tied a bandage far larger than was justified by the wound beneath. “People of Baiae, attend!” he intoned. “Today the praetor peregrinus hears the case of Gelon, son of Gaeto the Numidian, accused of the murder of Gorgo, daughter of Diocles, priest of the Temple of Campanian Apollo. Long live the Senate and People of Rome!”

  “Counselors, attend me,” I said. The two advocates approached my curule chair. I nodded to Tiro. He turned to face the crowd and raised his right hand, palm to the sky.

  “By Jupiter, Best and Greatest, dispenser of justice and protector of the innocent, I swear that I will prove the innocence of the accused. I am Marcus Tullius Cicero Tiro, freedman of the great proconsul Marcus Tullius Cicero.”

  At my nod the other now turned and raised his hand. He was a tall man with a face of great distinction, about forty-five years of age. His toga was draped in the fashion set by Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, a wonderfully effective look for delivering rhetoric.

  “By Jupiter, Best and Greatest, punisher of the guilty, I swear that I will prove the guilt of Gelon, son of the notorious slaver, murderer of Gorgo, daughter of our revered priest. I am Aulus Julius Vibianus, citizen of Rome and Baiae.”

  This surprised me. I had no idea that the Julian gens had a branch in Baiae. The only Julians you ever heard of in Rome were the ones surnamed Caesar, and there were few of them. They never used the praenomen Aulus. I looked at the man’s sandal and it was red, with the ivory crescent at the ankle, so he was a genuine patrician. I glanced toward Julia and she shrugged. She’d never heard of them either, it seemed.

  Julia, of course, had no official capacity, and some in Rome might have thought it rather scandalous that she would even be present at one of my trials. But nothing was going to keep her away from this one, just as no law or custom prevented her from occasionally leaning over to whisper something in my ear. As long as she never spoke aloud, no one could accuse her of female interference, or me of being swayed by my wife’s advice.

  Julia sat behind the dais, accompanied by Antonia and Circe and their whole gaggle of handmaids and pages. At the foot of the dais to my right Tiro and Gelon huddled with Cicero and his brother, getting some last-minute coaching. To my left, Vibianus stood with a group of men, doubtless some of the town’s leading legal minds.

  We began with the ritualistic denunciations, in which Tiro and Vibianus execrated each other and their respective clients, accusing them of all manner of crime and degeneracy. This is a traditional practice using many stock phrases and is so familiar that I will not bother setting down the vituperative details. Once this was over, the serious part of the trial began. The lots were cast and Tiro got to speak first. Since there were no other cases to be heard that day, I dispensed with the water clock and allowed each advocate to speak as long as he liked, stipulating that the proceedings must be concluded by sundown.

  Tiro came forward, his toga draped in the simple, ancestral fashion favored by Cicero. Tiro’s posture and assurance of bodily address were so dignified that no one would have guessed that he had ever been a slave had he not freely admitted to that state.

  “Citizens of Baiae,” he began, “I am here before you to prevent a gross injustice from being done. Gelon, the newly bereaved son of the late Gaeto of Numidia, has suffered grievously. In the first place, he lost the young woman to whom he was paying court.” There were angry mutters from the crowd, but he bore on. “Yes, I know that many of you judged him to be unworthy to approach so highborn a lady, but on what grounds do you judge him? Because his father dealt in slaves? It is a legal business of great antiquity, else how could he practice it openly among you? And this young man has never worked in that trade. Indeed, his dearest wish is to return to Numidia and take up the life of a gentleman of that land.” He wisely forebore to mention that this life was, by Roman standards, one of banditry.

  “As you all know,” he went on, “I have been a slave for most of my life, yet I find no fault in this young man. And, not only did he lose the maiden he loved but also now finds himself unjustly accused of her murder! There is no justification for this calumny! The only reason he finds himself suspect is the spite of Diocles, priest of Apollo. I sympathize with Diocles. Who would be so hardhearted as not to feel the grief of a father for a beautiful and blameless young daughter? But in his grief he has made an unjust accusation. His only cause for believing Gelon is the murderer is that he deemed the boy unworthy to approach his daughter.

  “He forbade the girl to associate with Gelon, and he barred Gelon from the temple and its precincts. Gorgo, dutiful girl that she was, obeyed her father. Gelon persisted in his suit.” Here Tiro gestured gracefully toward that imperiled young man. “And yet, can one expect otherwise of high-spirited youth? Since the earliest tales of the Greeks it has been acknowledged that the impetuous affections of youth are proof against the rancorous disapproval of parents.

  “Behold him!” Here Tiro swept his hand up and down, indicating the totality of the boy’s comely form. “Is he not as handsome as a god? Has he not the dress and bearing of a young prince? In the days of his freedom, did not all here see him riding in splendor upon his caparisoned steed, followed by his tribal guards, beautiful and noble as Alexander riding into Persepolis?”

  He won applause for his eloquence. There were nods and even shouts of agreement that the boy was indeed a fine sight, and how could one so comely be adjudged guilty? I have long noted that the prettier you are, the more likely you will be found innocent. There is something in us that wants to believe that ugliness signifies guilt and beauty is proof of innocence. Yet it has been my experience that lovely women and handsome men can be the foulest criminals. Nonetheless, it made an effective argument in court.

  “To add to his sorrows,” Tiro went on, “while under arrest, his own father was murdered! Attacked by an unknown assailant, while his son was unable to protect or avenge him, and only through the kindness of the praetor who held him in custody was he allowed to carry out the obsequies for his father. Is this justice?” Many seemed to agree that the boy had been done a bad turn.

  “And it does not end there!” Tiro cried, trembling with lawyerly indignation. “While riding back toward the praetor’s villa, the party was set upon by bandits, at the very gates of this city! The clear object of these desperadoes was the death of Gelon. Indeed, two of his loyal tribal guards died defending him! Are we to believe that this attack and the murder of the blameless Gorgo are unconnected?” Here there were growls of agreement. I glanced at the jury. They didn’t seem greatly impressed.

  “Those outlaws were set upon that p
arty in which Gelon rode, and only the valor of Roman arms and the loyalty of the fierce Numidians saved him! Nor did Gelon seek to take advantage of the situation to escape. Mounted on his splendid horse, such a course was quite feasible. Yet he meekly submitted to the authority of the praetor, trusting that Roman justice would prove his innocence. Is this the act of a murderer?”

  He went on in this vein for some time, extolling the virtues of his client, stressing his splendid appearance, that he just did not look like a guilty man. Even the impassive equites of the jury at last seemed to be swayed, perhaps more by the obvious wealth of the accused than by his appearance.

  Tiro summed up with a few more oaths as to his client’s innocence, then it was the prosecutor’s turn.

  Vibianus strode to the front of the dais and adjusted the elaborate draping of his toga with studied absentmindedness. “People of Baiae,” he began in a splendid voice, “our esteemed Tiro, known to you all for many years, has done well by his client, as any lawyer should. He has pointed out to you the boy’s greatest asset, which is his fine figure.” Here he paused and flicked some imaginary dust from his toga. “Well, I have a very handsome horse. Nonetheless, it has kicked me more than once.” This got him a good laugh.

  “So let us dispense with these irrelevancies and examine the realities of the matter at hand, shall we?” Head high, he scanned the crowd in lordly fashion, seeking and finding approval. The man knew how to conduct a prosecution, I had to admit. I hoped the rest of his performance would not be as competent.

  “First, I would like to eliminate from consideration the lurid incident of the bandit attack. By the way, in case you have not heard, those rogues have been exterminated, thanks to the swift action of the young horsemen of Sextus Pompeius!” Here the crowd cheered. I wanted to shout that I’d done for two of those bandits myself and my men and Gelon’s had killed most of the others and that I’d sent for the turma myself and they’d only killed four. But it would have appeared churlish to say so, and I held my tongue.