A Murder on the Appian Way

by Steven Saylor

  “He simply panicked, then?”

  “Something like that. Oh, it was excruciating to watch.”

  “Yes, I saw you squirming all through the speech.”

  “And Milo was practically frothing at the mouth! Now he talks as if it’s Cicero’s fault that he was convicted.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “He says they should have explained the full circumstances and argued for his technical innocence, no matter how embarrassing it might have looked, or how unlikely.”

  My head was muddled with wine. Tiro seemed to be echoing something Cicero had said the night before. I hadn’t understood Cicero either. “What are you talking about, technical innocence—”

  “And I know what you’ll ask next: was the speech really that good? That’s the truly painful thing. All the hours we put into that speech, and then to have it blown away like dust in the wind. It just might have gotten Milo off. Who knows? You can judge for yourself when we publish it. There’ll have to be revisions, of course. Then the world can see Cicero’s case for Milo laid out in all its perfection, without the distraction of that howling mob!”

  “Alas, too late for Milo. Tiro, what was that you said about—”

  “By Hercules, there’s someone I don’t care to see! It was good talking to you, Gordianus.” As he rose from the bench, I squinted through the orange haze to see who had arrived. I didn’t recognize him at first, until I heard someone call his name: “Philemon!”

  I felt an impulse to introduce myself. I looked around for Eco, but couldn’t find him in the haze. Was I that drunk? At last I spotted him off in a little anteroom, playing at dice. Faintly, above the roar, I heard him cry Menenia’s name for luck.

  Philemon was looking for a place to sit. I waved him over.

  “Do I know you, citizen?”

  I couldn’t blame him for being wary. “Not yet, but we have something in common.”

  “We both like cheap whores and rancid wine?”

  “A bit more than that. Sit. I’ll buy you a cup.”

  “I’d rather you bought me a whore.”

  “Maybe I will! I suppose it wasn’t easy, doing without for all that time.”

  “What, while I was stuck in Milo’s villa? At least that swine will never spend another holiday there!”

  “I suppose not. Have you finished that cup already? You must have another.” Philemon was behind me in inebriation, but he quickly caught up. He seemed to revel in repeating the story that had made him one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses. He launched into the tale with no prompting from me. The wine seemed to loosen his lips.

  “All right,” he said at one point, “the way I told it in court, I made us out to be a bit more heroic than we were; there, I’ve admitted it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s true enough that when we came upon Eudamus and Birria, and realized what they were up to, boasting about trying to kill Clodius, we shouted at them to stop.”

  “Yes, and then you said you and your friends rushed at them, but they beat you back and pursued you.”

  He laughed sheepishly. “Right! Except that we never rushed at them. I mean, this was Eudamus and Birria, grinning and covered with blood! Rush at them? I think not. We turned tail and ran, and they came after us.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I assured him.

  “No, but try telling it that way in front of a crowd of a few thousand people!”

  “Did you sweeten the truth about anything else?”

  He shook his head, then shuddered. “You can’t imagine it, being tied up at the mercy of creatures like that. My blood was like ice water. The first big fight they had, when they marched us through Bovillae, I thought I’d empty my bowels.”

  “A fight? What do you mean?”

  “An argument, among themselves. Pretty fierce. I thought maybe they’d kill each other and leave us alone. Something about where to go next and what to do about Clodius. I suppose they were arguing over what to do with his body.”

  “But his body was already gone. Senator Tedius had arrived on the scene, loaded it into his litter and sent it on to Rome.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s right. Maybe that’s what they were arguing about, then—wondering where the body had gone. I suppose that gave them a start! Yes, I suppose that’s what Milo was so furious about when they brought him the news. What, do you think he wanted them to bring back Clodius’s head for a trophy?”

  “He appears to have ended up with Clodius’s ring. That should have been enough, I’d think.” I imagined Eudamus or Birria slipping it off the corpse’s finger. I swallowed hard. “I wonder if Milo intends to take the ring to Massilia with him—a comfort for his exile?”

  Philemon wasn’t listening. “Yes, Senator Tedius. I saw him testify at the trial today. We passed him in the road, you know, between Bovillae and the place where Milo was waiting. Just sitting by the side of the road with his bodyguards, looking pleased with the world. You’d think he might have helped us!”

  “He thought you were the bandits who’d killed Clodius, and that Milo’s men had simply rounded you up!”

  “Ha! It’s a joke of the gods, isn’t it!”

  “Did you ask him for help?”

  “A lot of good that would have done. He practically saluted those two monster gladiators as we passed by. I felt like a trussed-up Gaul in some general’s triumphal parade.”

  “Maybe you should have appealed to his daughter for help.”

  “His daughter?” Philemon looked at me blearily and shook his head. I took it I had offended him by suggesting he might have appealed to a woman for help.

  Even fathers of errant daughters and husbands of imperious wives must go home sometime; and so, before the first hour of the day, Eco and I departed from the shelter of the Salacious Tavern and made our way up the Palatine Hill. I remember very little of that walk, except that far too much of it was far too steep. Like old Sextus Tedius laboring up the Appian Way, I kept having to sit and catch my breath. Growing older is a torment, and being drunk is a comfort only to a point, after which it becomes a torment, too.

  With sunrise would come a new day. Everything would be put back as it was. Eco and Menenia and the twins would return to the house on the Esquiline. I would send home Pompey’s guards with heartfelt thanks and a sigh of relief. Of course, some things could not be so easily undone …

  At least the crisis of the last few months was over. I washed my hands of everyone concerned! Milo, Clodia, Fulvia, Cicero and their respective satellites could all join Clodius in Hades. An end had been put to that story for good.

  So I thought, wending my way up the Palatine Hill. It was that hour of day when a man can still see only dimly, though dawn is near at hand; but in my befuddled state, I didn’t even realize that I was still in the dark, or that a light would soon be breaking.

  PART FOUR

  RING

  34

  “It can be fixed, of course,” said the artisan. “But …”

  “But it will cost me,” I said.

  “That goes without saying. The materials, the labor—the highly trained labor, I remind you—these things involve considerable expense.”

  “Then why the hesitation?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t guarantee that the work will keep. In fact, to be honest with you, I don’t think that the breaks in the statue can be repaired in a … fully satisfactory … manner.”

  “Satisfactory?”

  “In a way that would be both artistically pleasing and structurally sound. You see, if you look here, at the point where the break began, you can see the traces of a tiny fissure that was there to start with—”

  “You’re saying that the statue had a flaw all along?”

  “Oh, yes. Here, where the metal’s so thin. See how the lip of the break shears in a different pattern? That shows there was already a thin spot with a hairline crack. You would never have noticed it from the outside, of course. It loo
ked perfectly sound. But it was obviously cast with a flaw. Granted, no statue should be pushed from its pedestal, but given such an unfortunate event, this was the weakest point, and this is where the breakage inevitably occurred. Then it ran up along this thin spot, where the folds of the goddess’s robes are thinnest, then across the top of her hips …”

  After all the bloodshed I had seen in my life, it seemed foolish to be squeamish about a statue. But there was something gruesome about the scarred, chipped metal that showed along the rupture that had torn her in half, and something distasteful about examining her so intimately from the inside out. On the surface, she was so serenely perfect, gleaming, seemingly indestructible. On the hollow inner surface, she was all a mass of protruding plugs and rough spots and blisters. And all the time she had towered on her lofty pedestal overlooking my garden, radiating wisdom, there had been a terrible flaw inside her. A murderous mob had knocked her from her pedestal, and the flaw had torn her apart. Now the artisan was telling me that there was no satisfactory way to put her back together again.

  “But I can’t just leave her lying here in the garden like this, staring up at me every time I pass.” Wisdom in two pieces, with weeds growing up around her!

  “The statue could always be melted down. Of course you wouldn’t recover more than a small fraction of the value …”

  I shook my head. “Out of the question.” The statue, like the house, was a legacy of my old patrician patron, Lucius Claudius. Cicero himself had envied her. Melt her down? Never! But what was to be done? I had slept for only a few hours after returning from the tavern, but the moment I awoke, to the exclusion of all other problems, my mind had settled on the Minerva. Nothing would really seem right until she was back on her pedestal.

  The artisan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. There was said to be no man in Rome who knew more about casting bronze. He was a small bearded fellow, a Greek, the property of a foundry owner for whom I had once solved a problem involving a missing slave and a statue that seemed too heavy.

  “You might be able to make a bust out of her,” the Greek suggested.

  “What!”

  “If you made a clean cut, straight across below her breasts …”

  It was clear that the fellow might be a skilled artisan, but he was no artist. Nor did he seem to have any religious respect for the statue at all. I suppose it was a hazard of his work, dealing so much with the malleability and tensile strength of various alloys, that he should lose touch with the mystery inside the metal.

  “I simply want her put back into one piece again. Can it be done or not?”

  “Oh, it can be done.” The Greek turned aside for a moment. I knew he was rolling his eyes at my Roman willfulness. “But you’ll be able to see the patch if you look for it, and it won’t hold forever. A sharp knock, an earthquake—”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “As I said, it will be expensive.”

  “Are you authorized to bid for your master?”

  “I am.”

  “Then let’s bargain.”

  The lowest figure the man would settle for was still too much for the household coffers to bear. But I would get the money somehow. I dismissed him and stepped from the garden into my study. What was next for the day? I felt surprisingly energetic for having whiled away so many drunken hours the night before, and peculiarly sanguine, considering the storm clouds that had burst in my own home. When such a bright mood comes to a man of my years, I think it is best to enjoy it without question.

  Pompey’s guards had already left, while I slept. Eco and Menenia were busy transporting their household back to the Esquiline; it was remarkable how many objects had gravitated from their house to mine during their stay. I would miss seeing the twins’ toys—little painted ships and carved chariots and Egyptian board games with brightly colored pebbles—but I would not miss tripping over them. Bethesda felt obliged to oversee the move. She had apparently said whatever she had to say to Diana the night before. Diana herself stayed out of sight. Davus had apparently decided that there was an urgent need for a lookout on the roof, and had stationed himself there, conveniently out of the way.

  I clapped my hands. One of the slaves who was helping Eco stopped and looked into the room. “Do you know where my daughter is?” I said.

  “In her room … I think … Master.” He looked uncomfortable. They all knew about Diana by now, of course.

  “Go and tell her I wish to see her.”

  “Yes, Master!”

  My heart sank when she stepped into the room. She looked much too haggard for a girl of seventeen who was carrying a child. I felt many things—anger, apprehension, regret—but nothing as strong as the impulse to put my arms around her and simply stand that way for a moment, pressing her to me. It was Diana who broke the embrace and stepped away, averting her eyes.

  “Was it awful, after I left last night?” I said.

  “Mother, you mean?” She managed a little smile. “Not as awful as I expected. She blustered and shrieked at first. But once she calmed down, she acted more disappointed than angry. I don’t understand her. She was born a slave herself. Now she acts as if I was born to marry a patrician, and I’ve spoiled it.”

  “It is precisely because your mother was born a slave that she wants you to marry well.”

  “I suppose. Today she’s simply ignoring me.”

  I sighed. “I know how that feels, all too well. But Diana, how is your health? I know less than I should of what’s to be expected with such things. Your mother would know—”

  “That was her first concern, after her tantrum last night. She asked me a lot of questions. Everything seems to be as it should be, though I do feel wretched much of the time. That’s been the worst thing about all this—worrying and wanting to talk to her about it, and wanting to talk to you, Papa, and being afraid to. At least that’s over.”

  I fiddled with a stylus. “Perhaps you’re not fit for this pregnancy. Again, I’m woefully ignorant of specifics, but I’m sure your mother knows of ways to—”

  “No, Papa. I don’t want to end it.”

  “What is it that you do want, Diana?”

  “Papa, don’t you understand? I’m in love with Davus.” She shuddered and blinked. Her lips trembled.

  “Diana, please don’t cry anymore. Your eyes are red enough as it is. But whatever idea you may have in your mind concerning Davus, dismiss it.”

  “But Davus and I—”

  “Impossible, Diana!”

  “But why not? Mother was a slave. You married her, didn’t you? And that was because she was pregnant with me, wasn’t it? Meto was a slave when he was a little boy, and Eco was hardly better, a street urchin, but you adopted them. Why should it be any different—”

  “Diana, no!”

  The tears came at full flood. “Oh, you’re no better than she is! What hypocrites you both are. Well, I’m not a Vestal Virgin! You can’t bury me alive just because I love a man! I’m not ashamed that I’m carrying his child!”

  “Why don’t you yell a bit louder, so they can hear you at Cicero’s house? Now I suppose you’ll go running from the room.”

  “No. Why should I? It doesn’t matter where I am. I’m miserable! You’re a man, you can’t know how miserable I am. I’d want to die, if it wasn’t for the baby …”

  So much for my sanguine mood. “Diana, we’ll talk more about this when I get back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The day is still young. I have an errand to run, down the Appian Way. If nothing else, it will give me an excuse to spend another night away from this house.”

  Diana retreated back to her room. I stepped into the garden, avoided Minerva’s accusing stare and climbed the ladder to the roof. I came upon Davus near the front of the house, sitting with his arms around his knees. When he heard me he gave such a start I thought he might fall to the street below.

  “By Hercules, Belbo, be careful!”

  “Davus,” he mumbled, hurrie
dly righting himself and standing.

  “What?”

  “Davus, Master. Not Belbo.”

  “Oh. Of course. What was I thinking? Belbo had the common sense to be careful on a rooftop. And he never took advantage of a member of my family.”

  “Oh, Master!” Davus dropped to his knees. Those in the room below must have flinched at the concussion. He bowed his head and clasped his hands. “Have mercy on me! Don’t torture me, Master—kill me outright if you must. Torture is worse for big, strong fellows like me. Every slave knows that. Little weaklings are tortured for a while and then they die. But with a man like me, it could go on for days and days. I’m not afraid to die, Master, but I beg you—”

  “And how would you prefer to be executed, Davus?”

  He turned pale and swallowed. “Cut off my head, Master.”

  “That is not the part of you which has offended me.”

  He shuddered and looked up at me with wide eyes. “Don’t geld me, Master! I couldn’t stand to be a eunuch! Oh, have pity on me!”

  “Stop, Davus! Stop, stop, stop. Whatever am I going to do with you? Do you seriously imagine that I might have you killed?”

  “What else can I hope for, Master? It’s the best punishment I can expect.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Master?”

  “Why are you still here, waiting for your fate? Why haven’t you jumped off the roof and run away? You wouldn’t have much chance of escaping, but it’s better than death. Stow away on a boat leaving Ostia. Go into exile, like Milo. Why didn’t you run away last night?”

  “Because …”

  “Yes?”

  “Because of …”

  “What, Davus? What’s kept you here to face your punishment?”

  “Master, must you make me say it? It’s because of her. Diana. I can’t leave as long as she’s here. Where else would I go? What would be the point? I should die without her.”