A Murder on the Appian Way Read online

  I cleared my throat. “Clodius is dead. Someone killed him, with great violence—I saw the body myself.”

  “Saw it? Where?” snapped Milo.

  While I hesitated, pondering whether to tell them about my visit to Clodius’s house, Cicero spared me the decision by interrupting.

  “Gordianus saw the body from his rooftop, just as I saw it from mine. I told you, Milo, how they paraded the corpse all over the Palatine.”

  “Yes, I saw it from my rooftop,” I said. It was not, after all, a lie. “And if any Roman didn’t see it, he’s certainly heard about it.”

  “And what exactly are people saying about the matter?” said Cicero.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do they think Clodius died? Who do they think was responsible?”

  If Cicero wished to feign obtuseness, I would oblige him. “The word on everyone’s lips is that Milo killed him. Or Milo’s men.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Appian Way. Somewhere near Bovillae.”

  Cicero nodded thoughtfully. “How?”

  I paused. “Judging by the wounds, I would say that daggers were used.” I thought of the puncture wound at the shoulder. “Perhaps a spear, as well. And he may have been strangled.”

  “You must have had a clearer view of the body than I did!” said Cicero.

  “Perhaps my eyes are trained for such details.”

  “But you’ve heard no actual details of the … fatal incident … and how it came about?”

  “No.”

  Caelius nodded vigorously. “And neither have most people, I’ll wager. How could they have heard details? Who could possibly supply them?”

  Milo worked his stubbly jaw back and forth and drummed his fingers against his cup. “Still, rumors spring up like weeds in a crack. If a story has a hole in it, people will fill it up with anything that fits.”

  “Have you heard rumors, Gordianus?” said Cicero. “About a battle, an ambush, an accident?”

  “I’ve heard all sorts of rumors. An ambush, a battle, a single assassin, a traitor among Clodius’s men …”

  “I think that’s hopeful,” said Caelius, sitting back and raising an eyebrow. He held out his wine cup and a slave hurried to fill it. “People haven’t yet made up their minds. There’s still a chance for us to tell them our side of the story. But we’ll have to do it quickly. Gossip sets like mortar in people’s heads. Once it’s hardened you have to chisel it out. Best to pour your own gossip into their ears first.”

  “And of course there’s the fire,” said Cicero. “Surely that’s cracked open some hard heads. People who were hostile to Milo before will surely listen to reason now. Only the most lunatic radicals could take the side of that mob of pyromaniacs against Milo.” He sighed, exasperated. “I don’t understand why the death of Clodius should stir such a controversy, anyway, except among the small core of his most rabid followers. Any sensible man can see that Rome is better off without the scoundrel. It’s so obvious! If we go before the people and say ‘Yes, Milo killed Clodius,’ aren’t we simply saying that Milo is a hero? We’re essentially proclaiming him the savior of the Republic!”

  Cicero looked to me for a reaction. I answered carefully. “I can’t speak for most people, but I think there are plenty of Romans who are simply tired of all the chaos and disorder—”

  “Exactly,” said Cicero, “and it was Clodius who was behind all that disorder, fomenting unrest among the rabble, shaking up the natural order of things. Get rid of Clodius and you’re halfway to getting rid of chaos. Tiro, take that down: ‘Get rid of Clodius—’”

  “You may be going too far,” said Caelius, shaking his head. “It begins to sound like gloating. Even people who are glad to see the last of Clodius may have serious concerns about the circumstances of his death. You can’t make Milo out to be a champion of law and order if at the same time you proudly assert that he broke the law by killing a man.”

  “Ah, but it takes on a different light if you show that Milo was the victim of an ambush and merely defending himself,” said Cicero, waving a finger.

  “Was it an ambush?” I said, looking from face to face. “Was Milo the intended victim?”

  Tiro, busy scribbling on his tablet, didn’t look up. The others looked at me curiously.

  Cicero brightened. “Well, what do you think, Gordianus? Is it credible that Clodius might have set an ambush for Milo down on the Appian Way?”

  I shrugged. “Their hatred for one another was well known.”

  Caelius looked at me skeptically. I felt like a witness under cross-examination. “But then isn’t it just as likely that it was Milo who set a trap for Clodius? What would you say to that idea, Gordianus?”

  “But surely it can’t have been both ways. It must have been one or the other.”

  “Must it?” said Cicero. “What if there was no ambush at all? What if the two parties happened to meet on the Appian Way entirely by accident? Does that strike you as credible?”

  “Perhaps. But people pass on the road all the time without someone ending up dead.”

  Caelius laughed. “He has a point!”

  Cicero pressed his fingertips together. “But accidents happen. A man can’t always control his slaves, especially gladiators who’ve been trained to protect him and to react at the first hint of danger. Tiro, make a note: Milo needs to free certain of his slaves, who might otherwise be compelled to give testimony under torture. Slaves can be tortured, but not freedmen. If worse comes to worst …”

  “If it comes to a trial, you mean,” I said.

  Milo grunted. Cicero tapped his fingertips against each other. “It’s my conviction that Milo will yet be elected consul. He deserves no less for his service to the state! Still, we must be prepared for less happy possibilities.”

  “A trial for murder, you mean. What would Milo have to fear from the testimony of his slaves?”

  Cicero considered the question. “Gordianus makes a good point. If Milo waits and frees the slaves at the wrong time, it could look bad. The earlier the better, I think.”

  “You can always say they were manumitted out of gratitude, as a reward,” Caelius suggested. “They saved his life, after all.”

  “Did they?” I said.

  “Well, that’s what we’ll say,” said Caelius, looking at me as if I were a simpleton.

  I shook my head in disgust. “You’re only talking about appearances, aren’t you, and nothing more? About this or that hypothetical version of what might or might not have happened, and whether people will believe it. You might as well be writing a comedy for the stage.”

  “Better a comedy than a tragedy,” quipped Caelius.

  Cicero looked at me thoughtfully. “We are advocates, Gordianus. This is what we do.”

  I shook my head.

  Cicero saw that I was not satisfied. “How shall I put this?” he said. “Your nature is different from mine. Truth has a different meaning to you; you seem to think it matters in and of itself. But the truth you crave is an illusion! Chasing after Truth is a fit pastime for Greek philosophers who have nothing better to do, but we are Romans, Gordianus. We have a world to run.”

  He studied me for a long moment, and saw that I still resisted. “Gordianus! The next few days and months are absolutely critical to the survival of everything decent and honorable that remains in this city. You saw what they did yesterday—the madness, the destruction, the wanton desecration. Can you picture yourself in that mob? Surely not! Can you imagine what Rome would be like if people of that ilk were allowed to rule? A nightmare! Surely you can see where your own interests lie.”

  I studied each of their faces in turn—Cicero radiant with purpose, Tiro busy with his stylus, Caelius looking somber but ready to grin, and Milo thrusting out his jaw like a stubborn boy spoiling for a fight.

  “But what really happened on the Appian Way?” I said.

  I received only blank stares in reply, before Cicero smoothly moved on to some other
subject and then quickly, graciously, firmly made it clear that my visit was at an end.

  I left Cicero’s house without a satisfactory answer to my question—and indeed, with no clear idea of why he had summoned me. Cicero himself didn’t appear to know exactly what he wanted from me, but seemed merely to be feeling me out. I had a vague sense of opposing forces marshaling their powers, and wondered exactly where I stood in the scheme of things.

  7

  The siege at the house of the interrex Marcus Lepidus continued the next day, and the next, and the next, with the partisans of Scipio and Hypsaeus continuing to demand immediate consular elections.

  Temples and business interests in the Forum closed their doors. Every day, great crowds came to gawk at the charred ruins of the Senate House. Some wept, some cheered; fights and shouting matches were common. Some of the visitors laid flowers on the steps, as if it were a sepulcher, in honor of the man who had been cremated there. Others scattered the flowers and trampled on them.

  Affairs of state came to a standstill.

  Life continued, however. Bethesda sent her slave girls down to the markets to buy the things she needed for dinner. It took them longer than usual, as they had to search harder, but they returned with full baskets. Belbo went to fetch a pair of shoes that I had sent out to be repaired, and reported that work went on more or less as usual in the street of the shoemakers. People went about the day-to-day business of gaining a livelihood and feeding themselves, but with a sense of dreadful suspense. Rome had the distracted air of a man on a dark, unfamiliar path, doggedly pushing on, fretfully looking over his shoulder, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  Eco came to visit each day. “They’re all three mad if they think that the fellow still has a chance of being elected consul,” he said, when I told him about my peculiar interview with Cicero, Caelius and Milo. “But Cicero is right about one thing: the Clodians went too far when they burned the Senate House. They lost the sympathy of the people in the middle. Murder’s an outrage, but fire scares the wits out of people.”

  “Fire is a symbol of purification,” I suggested.

  “Maybe at a funeral, or in a poem. But when you start burning down buildings, fire stands for indiscriminate destruction. Purifying the state may sound like a lofty idea in a speech, but not when people start getting burned. When reformers turn violent, they scare people.”

  “So that anyone with anything to lose prefers things to stay as they are.”

  “That’s one result.”

  “Then maybe Milo does stand a chance to be elected consul.”

  “Never. He’s tainted by Clodius’s death.”

  “About which we still don’t have any concrete details,” I said, worriedly rubbing my chin. “So you think the voters will make Hypsaeus and Scipio consuls? But aren’t they tainted, as well? They had the support of Clodius, and now people are frightened of the Clodians.”

  “Yes, but Hypsaeus and Scipio are seen as being their own men. They weren’t associated with the burning of the Senate House.”

  “But they’re rabble-rousers nonetheless! Look at the blockade their supporters have thrown around Lepidus’s house! Surely they’re no more acceptable to the people in the middle than Clodius was.”

  Eco looked at me thoughtfully. “If Milo’s out … and if Hypsaeus and Scipio are also out …”

  “Don’t say it!”

  But he did. “People will turn to Pompey.”

  Pompey was much on the minds of many people in those days, including his old ally Milo.

  On the fifth and final day of Lepidus’s term as interrex, a trio of radical tribunes held a contio down in the Forum. Eco and I attended.

  A contio is a public open-air meeting. Though it may have a feeling of informality, it is a function of the state and is governed by specific rules. Only certain people may speak at a contio, they must address a specific topic, and so on. Most importantly, only certain officials may hold a contio. The consuls may do so, for example. So may the tribunes.

  Rome had no consuls for the time being. But there were ten tribunes, as usual. Some of them were keeping very busy.

  The funeral of Clodius, or rather the gathering in the Forum to hear Clodius eulogized and to burn his corpse, had been a contio, or at least had started out that way. It had been called by the tribunes Pompeius and Plancus. I had seen both of these men at Clodius’s house on the night of his murder, in the anteroom where the politicians had gathered to assess the disaster. The next day these two led the procession around the Palatine and down to the Forum. It was their speeches which inflamed the mob. Pompeius and Plancus were the same tribunes who had blocked the appointment of an interrex at the beginning of the new year, and had thus pushed back the scheduling of elections at a time when Milo felt confident of victory.

  Their contio on the final day of Lepidus’s term as interrex was attended by a great crowd. When Eco came to my house that morning and announced his intention to attend, I declined at first to accompany him. It would be insanity to go out in public at such a time, I argued, even with bodyguards. But the pull of the Forum was too strong. For four days, except for my visit to Cicero, I had kept almost entirely to my house. I was growing restless. In times of crisis or jubilation, there is something in a Roman’s blood that pulls him inexorably to join with great throngs of his fellow citizens to listen to other citizens make speeches beneath the open sky, where men and gods alike can see and hear.

  Eco insisted that we push our way to the front of the crowd. We wore our togas, as befitted the occasion; Eco’s bodyguards were dressed in tunics and cloaks. Thus one can often tell at a glance, in a mixed crowd, who is a citizen and who is a slave attending a citizen.

  Up on the platform, Plancus and Pompeius were joined by their fellow tribune Sallust. It was Sallust whom I heard in the house of Clodius, arguing that no one but Clodius could control the mob. He had warned of a bloodbath. But apparently he had reconciled himself to the rabble-rousing efforts of his fellow tribunes and had decided to join them. These three addressed the crowd not with formal speeches but alternating back and forth, as if having a conversation or a debate among themselves and soliciting the reactions of their fellow citizens.

  The exact circumstances of the incident on the Appian Way were not discussed. I was beginning to find this paucity of details maddening, but no one else in the crowd seemed to mind or even to notice. That Milo and his men had murdered Clodius in cold blood was simply taken for granted. The issue was what to do about it. The main thing, the speakers all agreed, was to hold consular elections at once. Once Hypsaeus and Scipio were in office, Milo could be dealt with accordingly.

  “But what about the rumors that Milo’s raising an army?” shouted someone in the crowd.

  “If his goal is insurrection,” said Sallust, “then it’s all the more important that we elect consuls at once, in order to raise a force against him for the defense of the city.”

  “But what about Milo’s allies here inside the city?” shouted someone else. “They say he has secret stockpiles of all sorts of weapons. They could cut our throats while we sleep. They could set our houses on fire—”

  “Ha! You Clodian arsonists shouldn’t talk about fire!” said another man. There were harsh words. A scuffle broke out. Though it was some distance away, Eco’s bodyguards grew tense and tightened their circle around us. The speakers on the platform ignored the interruption.

  “The fact is,” said Sallust, “Milo is back in Rome.”

  This news sent a murmur through the crowd.

  A man behind me, close enough for me to smell the garlic on his breath, cupped his hands around his mouth. “The shameless pig came back to Rome the very day after he murdered Clodius!” he shouted. “Milo must have been in his house that night when we went to pay a call with our torches. I should know, I took an arrow in my shoulder!” The man pulled his toga open at the throat to show off his bandages.

  “Brave citizen!” cried Sallust. He raised his
arm in salute, which prompted a round of cheering mixed with a few jeers. “But whatever Milo’s whereabouts for the last few days, we know that he was in town as of yesterday, because yesterday Milo emerged from hiding to go and pay a visit to Pompey Magnus at his villa on the Pincian Hill.”

  This news set off another murmur in the crowd. In the race for consul, Pompey had given his blessing to Hypsaeus, who had served him as a military officer in the East. But Pompey and Milo had once been allies, and Pompey and Clodius had often been enemies. Could it be that the Great One had been induced to countenance Milo’s crime and to throw his support behind the murderer? Pompey’s involvement could shift the balance conclusively, either for Milo or against him.

  Sallust smiled, reading the crowd’s anxiety and uncertainty, drawing out the suspense with his silence. “You will be happy to learn,” he finally said, “that Pompey Magnus, to his great credit, refused even to see the villain!”

  The suspense broke with a round of cheers.

  “And more than that, he sent the scoundrel a roundabout message politely asking him to refrain from calling again, so as to spare Pompey the embarrassment of refusing to see him again. Milo’s perfidy is so profound that even the Great One fears it might taint him if he should brush against it.”

  The tribune Plancus stepped forward. He spoke as if engaging Sallust in conversation, but his words rang out as only those of a trained orator can. “I should imagine that Milo was greatly offended by Pompey’s rebuff.”

  “I should imagine he was,” agreed Sallust. “We know that Milo is a man who offends easily. And we have seen how deadly his grudges can be.”

  Plancus mimed an expression of dismay. We were so close to the platform that I could see just how broadly he played his part. “What are you implying, Sallust? Do you imagine that Pompey himself might be … in danger?”

  Sallust gave a world-weary shrug, exaggerated just enough so that the gesture could be read from the back of the crowd. “We’ve seen that the monster will stop at nothing to take over the state. Clodius has already fallen victim to his bloodlust. If Pompey now stands in his way—”