A murder on the Appian way rsr-5

by Steven Saylor

  "Let me tell you, citizens, it's a strange thing, hearing a man proclaim your death in a gleeful voice. My bodyguards farther back in the retinue tried to fight their way to the carriage to help me, until they heard Clodius gloating that I was dead. Can you blame them for what happened next? They fought to defend themselves, yes, but they also fought because they were furious, because they thought that their master had been murdered and their mistress was in terrible danger. In the midst of the skirmish they came upon Clodius himself, and when the skirmish was over, Clodius was dead. I didn't order his death. It happened without my knowledge and outside my presence. Are my slaves to blame? No! They did exactly what every man here would have wanted his own slaves to do in the same situation. Am I not right?"

  There was a roar of agreement from the crowd. I noticed that the banker was especially enthusiastic.

  Milo seemed to draw strength from the crowd. He continued to shout above the roar. Veins bulged on neck and his face turned red. "If Clodius had succeeded with his ambush, it's I who would be dead today!" He poked his chest repeatedly with his forefinger, hard enough to bruise himself. "It would be Clodius that everyone would be pointing at. They'd all be accusing Clodius of murder, and saying Clodius was a threat to…" Milo restrained himself. It wouldn't do to say the Great One's name out loud. "But Clodius failed! Clodius lost! He paid the price for his wickedness. He was the cause of his own death, and I won't take responsibility for it!"

  This brought even louder cheers. Milo stood on tiptoe, clenching his fists at his sides and shouting to be heard. He had remarkably powerful lungs. "I regret nothing! I apologize for nothing! And I refuse to mouth empty words of comfort to his widow or his children, and certainly not to that vile sister of his. His death was the greatest gift the gods could give to Rome. If I'd strangled him with my own hands, I wouldn't be ashamed to say so! If I'd killed him in cold blood, caught him by surprise and stabbed him in the back, still I would be proud of the act!"

  Caelius hurriedly stepped forwards, his face rigid. I leaned towards Eco. "I think Milo has gone beyond his script."

  Caelius raised his left hand for silence. With his right hand he reached for Milo's shoulder. When Milo tried to shrug him off, Caelius tightened his grip until I saw Milo wince and shoot him an angry glance.

  The crowd ignored the signal for silence. They began to chant as if they were at an election rally. Several different chants started up at once. The result was deafening. The fuller joined in with those reciting an old piece of doggerel about Clodius and his sister:

  Clodius played the little girl While he was still a boy! Then Clodia made the little man into her private toy!

  This chant was repeated over and over, punctuated by whoops of laughter and shouted louder and louder to compete with another chant taken up by the banker and his retinue:

  Grain dole, grain dole, It's all just shit From Clodius's hole! Big pole, little pole, They all disappear Up Clodius's hole!

  Up on the platform, Milo burst into laughter. His face turned an apoplectic shade of red. He laughed so hard he began to weep. He seemed to me like a man who has been holding a torturous pose that strains every tendon to agony for hour after hour, and suddenly cannot hold the pose any longer. He shook so convulsively that he seemed hardly able to stand up.

  Caelius gave up on quieting the crowd. He wore a bemused, vaguely anxious expression, as if to say: This was not exactly what I intended, but I suppose it will do…

  I turned to Eco, curious to see my unflappable son's reaction, but he had reverted to muteness, as confounded as I was. To ridicule the dead is to mock the gods. There was something frightening in the sudden, raging hilarity of the mob, a vertiginous sensation of teetering at the edge of a dark precipice.

  The raucous chanting continued, but was suddenly joined by a noise more like screaming than laughter. An invisible, palpable tremor passed through the crowd, a quiver of anxiety. Heads turned in confusion, trying to discern the source. The ripple of apprehension was quickly followed by a wave of panic.

  How had Milo described the ambush on the Appian Way? Confusion, screaming, blood — if I'd been a bird flying overhead, I might be able to tell you exactly what happened — but it all began in the blink of an eye…

  So it was in the Forum that day, when the Clodians descended with flashing swords like a vengeful army on the contio of Caelius and Milo.

  I have never been a military man, but I am not a stranger to battle. In the year that Cicero was consul, I was with my son Meto when he fought for Catilina at the battle of Pistoria. I carried a sword. I saw Romans slaughter Romans.

  I have seen battle. I know what a battle looks like, sounds like, smells like. What happened in the Forum that day was nothing like a battle. It was a massacre.

  During the massacre itself there was no time to think about anything but escape. It was only afterwards that I was able to ponder exactly what happened.

  Some said that the Clodians' attack was spontaneous, spurred by reports of what Milo and Caelius were saying at the contio. Infuriated at the allegation that Clodius had staged an ambush, his grieving followers decided to show the crowd at the contio just what an ambush was like. Others argued that the attack was premeditated, just as Clodius's ambush on the Appian Way had been premeditated, and that the Clodians had only been waiting for Milo's appearance and the first public gathering of his supporters to launch their assault.

  Premeditated or not, the attack was well staged. The Clodians arrived heavily armed. They made no attempt to hide their weapons. They carried short swords, daggers and clubs. Some carried bags of stones. Some carried torches. They seemed to appear from all sides at once. The panicked crowd contracted into itself) so that at first there was as great a danger of being crushed or trampled underfoot by friends as there was of being cut open or clubbed to death by foes.

  Of course, despite the law which forbids carrying weapons inside the city walls, many at the contio were secretly armed or had armed

  bodyguards, and many of them (especially those who were part of Milo's regular gang), had as much experience of street fighting as the Clodians, so the engagement was not entirely one-sided. But the Clodians had the strategic advantage of surprise and the tactical advantage of having the crowd surrounded. They may also have had a considerable advantage in numbers — that was what the bruised and battered adherents of Milo claimed afterwards, but at the time I doubt that anyone bothered to count heads.

  Milo's adherents would also claim afterwards that the attackingforce was made up largely of slaves. Clodius's lieutenants, they claimed, now commanded whole armies of slaves and former slaves who owed them allegiance thanks to Clodius's radical innovations, like the grain dole. That was the true crime of what happened that day, Milo's people said: that slaves and ex-slaves had disrupted a peaceable public assembly of citizens conducting state business. What had the Republic come to when such low-born rabble ruled the streets?

  But as I say, all these considerations came as afterthoughts. At the time, panic reigned.

  Eco and I sensed the danger at the same moment, even though there was nothing yet to see. He reached for my arm. I reached for his. His bodyguards turned outward in a ring and reached for the daggers hidden in their tunics.

  Eco pressed his mouth to my ear. "Whatever happens, Papa, stay close to me!"

  More easily said than done, I thought, as bodies pressed together and were wrenched this way and that, like links of armour being tested by a smith. To be caught in such a crowd must be something like the sensation of drowning in rough waters. A sea of bodies is a solid, writhing thing that presses back against you, struggling, like you, to stay alive.

  The noise became deafening- oaths, curses, screams, grunts, sudden high-pitched wails and guttural, choking sounds. The fuller and his slave were suddenly next to me. He was yelling, to no one in particular, "I knew this would happen! I knew it!"

  Suddenly there was a break in the crowd nearby, like a rip through a piece of
cloth. The Clodians broke through. Wild-eyed men with upright daggers in their fists rushed towards me. Their hps were drawn back, their teeth clenched. They growled like dogs.

  Eco's bodyguards seemed to have vanished, along with Eco. The panicked crowd was at my back, like a solid wall; I could no more melt into it than I could melt into stone. "That one!" cried one of

  the attackers, pointing with his knife. "Get the bastard!" He rushed towards me.

  I braced myself, fighting the impulse to turn away. I have always promised myself that I would not end up as one of those corpses discovered with wounds in the back. I stared at the man's face, trying to look into his eyes, but his wild gaze was fixed on something beyond me. He veered past me, his knife whistling a shrill note a finger's-width from my ear. His friends followed, shoving me out of the way. From the comer of my eye I saw flashing daggers rise into the air one after another, like long-necked birds craning skyward.

  I pressed myself into the fleeing crowd, trying to merge again into its anonymity, trying not to watch. An even stronger impulse compelled me to look back.

  The daggers rose and fell, rose and fell. They were met by other daggers. Streamers of blood shot upward like screams congealing in the frosty air. In the midst of the turmoil I saw the man I had taken for a banker. He was the one the Clodians had rushed to attack. His cordon of bodyguards had been breached and decimated. The slaves who fell defending him were crumpled in a mass around him, their bloodstained bodies trapping his legs so that he could not flee. The Clodians circled him like vultures, their knives like pecking beaks. They stabbed him again and again. As he twisted and writhed, his mouth gaping in a soundless scream, greedy hands reached to snatch the silver necklace from his throat and pull a bag of coins from inside his toga.

  His assailants circled him once more and then moved on, like a whirlwind. By some miracle the banker remained upright. His eyes and mouth were wide open in astonishment, his toga covered with blood. Suddenly one of his assailants rushed back and quickly, skdlfuly, like a dutiful slave caring for his master's accoutrements, took the man's hand and slipped the gold signet ring from his finger.

  The thief might have left it at that, but having come back to finish his business he seemed determined to strike a final blow. He slipped behind the stupefied banker and raised his dagger high, gripping it with both hands. I cringed and braced myself as if the blow were aimed at me.

  But I never saw it fell. A strong hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around. I faced a hulking young man with glinting eyes and a grimly set jaw. At the bottom edge of my sight I saw flashing steel and knew he held a dagger.

  I have faced the prospect of imminent death on several occasions in my near-sixty years. It always seems to provoke the same chain of thoughts in my head. You fool, I always think-because it seems that such situations could always, somehow, have been avoided or at least postponed-you fool, this is the end of you at last. The gods have lost interest in the little story of your life. You no longer amuse them. You shall now be snuffed out like a guttering lamp…

  It is always the same: the names of my loved ones echo in my head. I hear the sweet sound of my father's voice, which I have not heard for many, many years. And sometimes, in such moments, and this was such a moment, I see the face of my mother, who died when I was very young, and whose face I can otherwise never quite recall. I remembered it vividly in that instant, and knew that my father had been right when he had told me, as he had often done, that she was beautiful, very beautiful…

  But of course A part of me knew that I was not yet destined to die, and understood at once when the hulking young man, in a gruff desperate voice, said, "Thank Jupiter I found you! The master is furious! Come on!"

  The fellow was one of Eco's young bodyguards, of course. In my confusion I had not recognized him.

  Eco had retreated behind a nearby temple, where a lean-to shed attached to the plain rear wall offered a degree of concealment. We could still be seen from two directions, since the shed was open at either end, but the spot was at least more defensible than standing in the open.

  "Papa! Thank the gods Davus found you!"

  "Never mind the gods. Thank Davus." I smiled at the sturdy young fellow, who grinned back at me. "What now?"

  Eco peered out glumly. There was nothing and no one to be seen except blank walls which cast back the echoes of the rioting mob. "I suppose we could stay here. Not a bad spot to make a stand, though there's no knowing what we might come up against."

  "Should we make a run for it?"

  "Maybe. To your house or mine?"

  "Mine's closer," I said. "But we'd have to cross the Forum somehow, and I imagine there's more chance of the riot spreading up that way, towards Milo's house." I felt a chill as I thought of my wife and daughter alone at the house, with only a barred door and Belbo to protect them.

  "To my house then, Papa?"

  "No. I have to get back to Bethesda and Diana."

  He nodded. The sound of the not seemed to grow louder, though it might have been only a trick of the acoustics. Suddenly two figures appeared from around the corner of the temple. We ducked into the shadows.

  From their plain tunics, the two appeared to be slaves. They rounded the corner so fast they bumped into each other and almost fell. The taller one saw the shed and pointed. "There! We could hide there!"

  The shorter, stockier one saw the shed and rushed towards it, pushing his companion out of the way. They were almost like comic slaves out of Plautus, except that in a play they would be fleeing a just beating from their master, not a bloody riot.

  "Jupiter's balls!" said the taller one, hurrying to catch up. "You needn't push me down, Milo!"

  "And you needn't shout my name out loud, you idiot! Come on, before someone sees us."

  Milo was inside the shed before he realized it was occupied. The first thing he saw were four daggers pointing towards him as Eco's bodyguards advanced. Caelius, coming up from behind, bumped into him and knocked him forwards. Milo's eyebrows shot up and he bared his teeth in a grimace as he tripped forwards and very nearly impaled himself on the nearest dagger. Caelius, glimpsing steel, skittered back and peered wide-eyed into the shed.

  "Draw back!" said Eco, calling off the bodyguards. "These two won't hurt us."

  Milo scanned the faces confronting him and stopped at mine. "Gordianus? Is that you? Cicero's man?"

  "Gordianus, yes. Cicero's man, no. And you're Milo, though who would know it to look at you? Where's your toga?"

  "Are you joking? The mob is going after anybody in a toga. They're all a bunch of cut-throat slaves and thieves, killing and robbing every citizen they come to. I threw off my toga the first chance I got. Thank Jupiter I was wearing this tunic underneath."

  "You took off your ring of citizenship as well," I said, looking at his bare finger.

  "Yes, well…"

  "I see that Marcus Caelius followed your inspiration." I shook my head. Two of the most powerful men in Rome were deliberately posing as slaves, and behaving like slaves as well. I suddenly had to laugh.

  "Stop that!" said Milo.

  "Sony. It's the tension of the moment." But I started laughing again, and was soon joined not only by Eco but by Eco's slaves. Even Caelius, always ready to see the absurdity in any situation, barked out a laugh.

  "But where's your retinue, your bodyguards?" I said.

  "Slaughtered. Scattered. Who knows?" said Milo.

  "I don't suppose that could be them?" I said, all laughter dying from my voice. A group of dagger-wielding men had just appeared from around the corner.

  "Oh, Jupiter's balls!" Caelius groaned. He and Milo shoved their way through the shed and fled out the other side. I followed with Eco and his bodyguards bringing up the rear. Behind us I heard a clash of steel and turned to see one of the pursuers stagger and fall, clutching his chest where Davus had wounded him. At the sight of one of their own gushing blood, the brigands lost heart and fell back.

  Caelius and Milo ha
d disappeared. We found ourselves at the edge of the riot, amid the scattered bodies of the wounded and dead. The paving stones were slick with blood. Smoke belched from the entrance to the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Next door, atop the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Virgo Maxima and her priestesses had gathered on the roof and were watching the scene below with expressions of horror and outrage.

  "Come! This way!" I said, pointing to the paved walkway between the two buildings. It took us to the base of the Palatine Hill and onto the Ramp. Others were ahead of us, fleeing up the long sloping path like refugees from a sacked city. I thought I glimpsed Caelius and Milo far ahead, travelling at a breakneck pace and knocking people out of their way right and left.

  I was completely out of breath before I reached the top of the Ramp. Eco saw my distress and signalled to his bodyguards to help me along. They seized my arms and practically carried me the last few steps. We hurried across the street, towards my house.

  Suddenly, ahead of us, from out of one of my neighbours' houses, a group of armed men burst into the street. Their leader clutched a handful of jewellery — strands of pearls and silver links dangled from his grubby fingers. In his other hand he held a dagger dripping blood. The door behind him had been knocked from its hinges.

  "You there!" he shouted at us. Though he was some distance away I smelled wine and garlic on his breath. Garlic for strength, an old gladiator's trick; wine to fortify his courage. He had a red face and ice-blue eyes. "Have you seen him?"

  "Seen who?" I gestured to the bodyguards to give the party a wide berth but to keep moving forwards.

  "Milo, of course! We're going from house to house searching for him. When we find him we shall crucify him for killing Clodius."

  "Searching for Milo, are you?" said Eco. He was looking at the fistful of stolen jewellery; the sarcasm in his voice made me cringe.