A Murder on the Appian Way Read online

  Somewhere beyond that crowd, at the far side of the forecourt, was the entrance to the great house itself, which sprawled across the hill like a self-contained village, its various wings surrounded by yet more terraces and connected by porticoes lined with yet more multicolored marble columns. The house loomed above us, a miniature mountain of deep shadows and shimmering marble, lit from within and without, suspended dreamlike between the lowering clouds and the hazy reek put forth by the torches.

  “What now?” I said to Eco. “We can’t even get into the forecourt. The crowd’s too thick. The rumor must be true—look at all these grown men weeping. Come, best to get back home and look after our families. No telling what will happen next.”

  Eco nodded but didn’t seem to hear. He stood on tiptoe, straining to see within the forecourt. “The doors to the house are shut. No one seems to be going in or out. Everyone’s just milling about—”

  There was a sudden pulse of excitement in the crowd. “Let her through! Let her through!” someone shouted. The crush grew even greater as people stepped back to make way for some sort of conveyance coming through the street. A phalanx of gladiators appeared first, roughly shoving and elbowing their way forward. People did their best to get out of the way. The gladiators were enormous, like giants; Eco’s bodyguards were mere boys by comparison. They say there are islands beyond the northernmost reaches of Gaul where men grow that big. These had pale faces and scraggly red hair.

  The crowd in front of us compressed. Eco and I were squeezed together, with his bodyguards still in a ring around us. Someone stepped on my foot. My arms were trapped at my sides. I caught a glimpse of the approaching litter, supported on the shoulders of bearers who dwarfed even the giant gladiators. Suspended above the crowd, the red and white striped silk canopy shimmered in the flickering torchlight.

  My heart skipped a beat. I knew that litter. I had been carried in it myself. Of course she would be here.

  The litter drew closer. Its curtains were closed, as of course they would be. She would have no desire to see the mob, or to be seen by them. But for a brief moment, as the canopy passed, it seemed to me that the curtains parted a tiny bit. I strained to see above the heads of the litter bearers but was confounded by the play of light and shadows that rippled across the red and white silk. Perhaps it was only a shadow I saw, and not an opening at all.

  Eco’s hand on my shoulder abruptly drew me back, out of the path of the gladiators who advanced alongside the canopy. He spoke into my ear. “Do you think—?”

  “Of course. It must be her. The red and white stripes—who else?”

  I was hardly the only man in the crowd to recognize the litter and to know who must be inside. These were Clodius’s people, after all, the poor of the Subura who rioted at his command, the ex-slaves who looked to him to protect their voting rights, the hungry mob that had grown fat from his legislation to hand out free grain. They had always supported Clodius, as he had always supported them. They had followed his career, gossiped among themselves about his sexual escapades and family affairs, plotted terrible fates for his enemies. They adored Clodius. They might or might not have adored his scandalous older sister, but they recognized her litter when they saw it. Suddenly I heard her name, whispered by someone in the crowd. Others repeated it, then joined in unison, until the name became a soft chant that followed in the wake of her canopy:

  “Clodia … Clodia … Clodia …”

  Her litter passed through the narrow gateway into the forecourt. Her gladiators could have cleared the way by force, but violence turned out to be unnecessary. At the sound of her name the mourners in the court drew back in a kind of awe. A pocket of emptiness formed before the litter and closed after it, so that it proceeded swiftly and without incident to the far side of the court and up the short flight of steps to the entrance. The tall bronze doors opened inward. The canopy was turned so that its occupants could not be seen as they alighted and entered the house. The doors shut behind them with a muffled clang.

  The chanting died away. An uneasy hush descended on the crowd.

  “Clodius, dead,” said Eco quietly. “It hardly seems possible.”

  “You haven’t lived as long as I have,” I said ruefully. “They all die, the great and the small, and most of them sooner than later.”

  “Of course. I only mean—”

  “I know what you mean. When some men die, it’s like a grain of sand thrown into a river—there’s not even a ripple. With others, it’s like a great boulder. Waves splash onto the bank. And with a very few—”

  “Like a meteor falling out of the sky,” said Eco.

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s hope it won’t be as awful as that.” But something told me it would be.

  We waited for a while, trapped by the inertia that falls upon a crowd when something momentous looms. From those around us we picked up numerous, conflicting rumors of what had happened. There had been an incident on the Appian Way, just outside Rome—no, twelve miles away, at Bovillae—no, somewhere farther south. Clodius had been out riding alone—no, with a small bodyguard—no, in a litter with his wife and their usual retinue of slaves and attendants. There had been an ambush—no, a single assassin—no, a traitor among Clodius’s own men …

  So it went, with no sure truth to be found, only a single, unanimous point of agreement: Clodius was dead.

  The lowering clouds gradually moved on to reveal the naked firmament—moonless, pitch-black, spangled with stars that glittered like ice crystals. The short, swift walk from my house had warmed my blood. The crush of bodies and burning torches had kept me warm, but as the night grew colder, so did I. I curled my toes, rubbed my hands together, watched my breath mingle with the smoke in the air.

  “This is no good,” I finally said. “I’m freezing. I didn’t bring a heavy enough cloak.” Eco seemed warm enough, I noticed, in a cloak no heavier than mine, but a man of fifty-eight has thinner blood than a man twenty years younger. “What are we waiting for, anyway? We found out what the panic was about. Clodius is dead.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  I had to smile. He had learned his trade from me. Curiosity becomes a habit. Even when there’s no money in it, a Finder can’t help being curious, especially when there’s murder involved. “We won’t find out from this crowd,” I said.

  “I suppose not.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He hesitated. “You’d think they’d send someone out to talk to the crowd. Surely someone will come out sooner or later …” He saw me shivering. “Let’s go, then.”

  “You don’t have to leave.”

  “I can’t let you walk home alone, Papa. Not on a night like this.”

  “Send the bodyguards with me, then.”

  “I’m not fool enough to stay in this crowd alone.”

  “We could split them up, two for you and two for me.”

  “No. I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll walk you home. Then I’ll come back if I still want to.”

  We might have haggled over these logistics for a while longer, but at that moment Eco lifted his eyes to look at someone behind me. His bodyguards tensed.

  “I’m looking for a man called Gordianus,” said a rumbling voice above my head. I turned to find my nose pressed against an extremely broad chest. Somewhere up above was a ruddy face topped by a fringe of red curls. The fellow’s Latin was atrocious.

  “I’m Gordianus,” I said.

  “Good. Come with me.”

  “Come with you where?”

  He cocked his head. “Into the house, of course.”

  “At whose invitation?” I asked, already knowing.

  “At the lady Clodia’s command.”

  She had seen me from her litter after all.

  2

  Even with the red-haired giant leading us, I was dubious of the prospect of pressing through the crowded gateway and across the forecourt. Instead, he started off in another direction. We followed him down the street, past the fri
nges of the crowd to the foot of a narrow stairway tucked into the hillside beyond the outermost ring of marble terraces. The stairway was flanked by fig trees whose dense branches formed a canopy above.

  “Are you sure this leads to the house?” said Eco suspiciously.

  “Just follow me,” said the giant gruffly, pointing ahead to a distant lamp at the top of the stairs. Without a torch to guide us, the way was dark and the steps lost in shadow. We mounted them cautiously, lagging behind the giant, until we arrived at a narrow landing. The lamp was hung above a wooden door. Beside the door stood another gladiator, who ordered us to leave our escorts outside and to remove our weapons. Eco produced a dagger and handed it over to one of his bodyguards. When I protested that I carried nothing, the red-haired giant insisted on searching me. Finally satisfied, he opened the door and led us inside.

  We followed a long, dim hallway, descended a flight of steps, and at length emerged into a narrow room. We were in the vestibule of the house, just inside the tall bronze doors, which were barred on the inside by a sturdy wooden beam. Through the doors I could hear the noise of the restless crowd from the courtyard beyond. “Wait here,” the giant said, as he stepped through some curtains.

  The vestibule was lit by a hanging lamp, its flames reflected in the polished marble walls and floor. I stepped closer to the shimmering red curtains, fascinated by them. “Do you know what these are, Eco? These must be the famous Attalic draperies. There’s genuine gold thread in them. To see them by firelight, you’d think the fabric was woven of flames!”

  I should explain that the house of Publius Clodius, and its furnishings, had a brief but remarkable history. The original owner had been Marcus Scaurus, who began building the house six years before. That was the same year that Scaurus was elected aedile, and was thus obliged, at his own expense, to entertain the masses with theatrical productions during the fall festivals. Following the age-old tradition, Scaurus constructed a temporary theater on the Field of Mars outside the city walls. Two years later Pompey would build the first permanent theater in Rome—Roman children would grow up thinking nothing of such Greek decadence in their midst—but Scaurus’s theater was built to stand for only a season.

  I have been to many cities and seen many remarkable buildings, but never the like of Scaurus’s theater. There were seats for 80,000 people. The enormous stage was three stories high, supported by 360 marble columns. Between these columns and tucked in various niches throughout the building there were a total of 3,000 bronze statues. These outlandish numbers were talked about until everyone knew them by heart, and they were not exaggerations; in slack moments during the plays, gawkers would count the columns and statues out loud while the poor actors emoted to no avail, upstaged by the decor.

  The bottom story of the stage was decorated with marble, the top story with gilded wood, and the middle story with astonishing constructions of colored glass—not merely small windows but whole walls of glass, an extravagance that had never been seen before and will surely never be duplicated again. To decorate the stage there were enormous scenic backdrops painted by some of the finest artists in the world, framed by lavish Attalic draperies of red and orange cloth interwoven with gold thread, like the legendary golden robes of King Attalus of Asia; under the bright light of noon they seemed to be woven of sunlight itself.

  When the festivals were over and the theater was taken down, Scaurus sold off some of the decorations and made lavish gifts of others. But much of the stuff he kept for himself, to decorate his new house on the Palatine. Marble veneers and columns were turned into terraces and porticos. The walls of colored glass were transformed into skylights. Enormous crates full of statues and fabulous draperies and paintings were stacked up in the forecourt of the house and gradually taken inside. For his redesigned atrium, Scaurus decided to install the largest columns from the theater, made of black Lucullean marble, each eight times as tall as a man. The columns were so heavy, and hauling them so difficult, that a sewage contractor forced Scaurus to post a bond against possible damages to the city drains when the columns were transported across town to the Palatine.

  The house of Scaurus excited almost as much comment as his theater. People who had gawked at the theater came to gawk at the house. His more conservative (and less affluent) neighbors considered the place an affront to good taste, a monstrosity of waste and excess, a defamation of stern Roman virtue. Those who complained should have remembered the old Trojan axiom: no matter how appalling a situation, it can always get worse—as when word got out that Scaurus was moving and had sold the place to the rabble-rouser Clodius. Clodius, the highborn patrician who disowned his pedigree to become a plebeian; Clodius, the bane of the Best People; Clodius, the Master of the Mob.

  Clodius had paid almost fifteen million sesterces for the house and its furnishings. If the rumor was true—that Clodius was dead—then he had had little time to enjoy the place. He would never see the marble terraces bloom with roses in the spring.

  I poked my head through the Attalic draperies into the atrium beyond, where the ceiling abruptly shot up to the height of three stories. “The Lucullean marble columns!” I whispered to Eco, stepping through the curtains and beckoning for him to follow, for here they were, soaring up in jet-black splendor to the ceiling forty feet above.

  In the center of the atrium was a shallow pool decorated with shimmering mosaic tiles of blue-black and silver, picturing the night sky and the constellations. High above the pool a corresponding square was cut into the roof, but instead of being open to the sky, there appeared to be a vast pane of glass across the skylight, through which the stars wavered as if they were underwater. It was a dizzying conceit: the skylight above appeared to be a pool reflecting the stars at our feet.

  I took a slow walk around the perimeter of the atrium. Installed in niches in the walls were the wax masks of family ancestors. Publius Clodius Pulcher came from a very ancient, very noble line. One by one, the faces of his predecessors stared impassively back at me. Most had been captured in maturity or old age, but one could see they were in general a handsome lot. Pulcher—the name of the family branch—means beautiful, after all.

  Eco tapped my shoulder. Our escort had returned. He gestured with a toss of his chin and we followed him more deeply into the house.

  As we walked down hallways I peered into the rooms on either side. Everywhere I saw reminders that we were in a house that had only recently been moved into and was still unsettled. Boxes and crates were stacked mazelike in some rooms, while other rooms were empty. In some places there was scaffolding and the smell of fresh plaster. Even the rooms which appeared finished seemed somehow tentative—furniture was set at odd angles, pictures were hung in odd spaces, statues were placed too close together.

  What had I expected to find inside the house? Women weeping, slaves running about in confusion, a sense of panic? Instead the house was quiet, with hardly a person in sight. The vastness of the place made the quiet seem all the more acute and uncanny, like a deserted temple. Occasionally a slave crossed our path, deferentially stepping out of our way and keeping his face averted.

  When the body dies, a philosopher once told me, all the life within it contracts to a single point before expiring altogether. So it seemed inside the house of Clodius, that all the life had gathered in one place, for suddenly we rounded a corner and entered a room lit by many lamps and full of hushed voices. Nervous-looking men in togas paced fretfully about, conversing in groups, gesturing with their hands, shaking their heads, arguing in whispers. Slaves stood out of the way in corners, quiet but alert, awaiting instructions.

  We came to a closed door at the far side of the room. Nearby a hulking brute of a man sat with his chin in his hands, wearing a miserable expression. There was a bloodstained bandage on his head and a tourniquet around one arm. A handsome young man in an elegant tunic hovered over him, berating him and barely pausing to let the brute answer in mumbles. “I still can’t understand how you could have deser
ted him like that. Why were there so few of you with him in the first place? What in Hades were they thinking when they took him to that tavern instead of back to his villa?”

  Our escort gently rapped on the door with the side of his foot; someone had taught him good manners. The young man and the wounded man looked up and peered suspiciously at Eco and me.

  The wounded man frowned. “Who in Hades—?”

  The young man stared at us dully. “It must be that fellow my Aunt Clodia sent for.”

  The door opened. A pair of feminine eyes peered out. Our escort cleared his throat. “The one called Gordianus, and his son, Eco.”

  The slave girl nodded and opened the door. Eco and I stepped inside. Our escort stayed behind as the girl shut the door.

  The room had the feeling of a sanctuary. Thick rugs covered the floor and tapestries covered the walls, muffling the quiet crackling of the single brazier that warmed the room and cast long shadows into the corners. Against one wall there was a long table, like an altar, with a few women clustered before it, their backs turned to us. The women were robed in black, their hair let loose to fall over their shoulders. They seemed not to notice our arrival. The slave girl went to one of them and touched her gently on the elbow. Clodia turned and looked at us from across the room.

  I had not seen her for almost four years, since the trial of Marcus Caelius. Clodia had retained my services to assist the prosecution; things had not gone as she planned, and her miscalculations had ended badly for her. Since then she had led a much quieter, more private existence, or so one heard, on the rare occasions when her name was mentioned. But I had not forgotten her. One never forgets a woman like Clodia.