John Roberts - A Point of Law

“I just wish I knew whether Pompey is involved. I rather doubt it. Subtlety was never his style.”

At that moment Hermes burst in, breathing hard, sweating and grinning. “Oh, good! I’ve caught you before you could get away!”

“You’ve learned something important?” I turned to Asklepiodes. “I sent him to the house of Caius Marcellus to bribe some information out of the man’s slaves.”

“I may have, but that’s not why I ran all the way to Callista’s and then here. You’ve got to come to the Forum. There’s a show going on there you won’t want to miss!”

“What?” I was totally mystified.

“Last night someone attacked Curio and tried to murder him!”

“Is he dead?” I got to my feet. This had to be tied to my own difficulties.

“No, just knocked about and cut up a bit. But the real show is Fulvia. She’s gone down to the Forum like a blood-soaked Fury, and she’s baying for vengeance.”

“Jupiter preserve us all,” I groaned. “The last time Fulvia put on a show, the mob burned the Curia and half the buildings around it.”

“This I must see,” Asklepiodes said, gleefully. “Let’s take my litter. I can get us there far more speedily than the two of you can make it on foot.”

Ordinarily, a litter gets you where you are going no more quickly than if you had walked. It just gets you there in style and much cleaner than if you had braved Rome’s unsanitary streets. The litter of Asklepiodes was different.

First, there were his bearers. They were all powerful men and trained runners. The physician often had to rush to the site of an emergency and did not want to waste time. He used eight of them, instead of the more common four or six, so that each would bear a lighter load. Perhaps even more important, though, was the flying wedge of gladiators that cleared the way before us. Rome’s narrow streets were easily jammed, and they tended to get more so as you approached the Forum, especially if there was something interesting happening there, as there was on this morning.

For obvious reasons the gladiators of Statilius Taurus prized their surgeon and were always willing to do anything to keep him happy. Up front we had a dozen of them, all huge men who positively loved hard, physical contact. Thus we were able to cross the City at a running pace.

“All right,” I said to Hermes, as we lounged behind the closed curtains, “tell me what you learned.”

Hermes mopped his face with a fold of his tunic. His sweat was testimony to his exertions that morning. He was in superb physical shape, and it took a strenuous sprint to bring perspiration to his brow.

“I managed to catch some of Caius Claudius’s slaves on their way to the fruit and vegetable market. One of them was the cook who had been assigned to the house of Fulvius. There were six of them assigned, and I was lucky to catch this one because the others were all Syrians barely able to understand Latin.”

“Didn’t I tell you these were careful plotters?” I said to Asklepiodes. “The slaves they lent their man were foreign, so that they wouldn’t be able to understand or repeat what they overheard. Too many people blab as if their slaves weren’t there.”

Hermes nodded agreement. “But the cook had to know Latin because she had to do the marketing. Unfortunately, she was mostly confined to the kitchen and didn’t hear much. But the man had callers at all hours of day and night, and the conversations out front got pretty heated.”

“Had she any idea who the visitors were?”

“She said they mostly had low-class accents, but a few were high class, and it was most often those voices she heard arguing.”

“She didn’t hear any details of their conversations at all?”

“None she was willing to talk about. Remember, she is still a slave.”

A slave’s lot is not a happy one in cases of this sort. They can only testify under torture, and a slave who voluntarily testifies against his master can look forward to a short and miserable life. I recalled that, after the killing of Clodius, Milo freed all the slaves who had been with him, ostensibly as a reward for saving him from Clodius (as if Titus Milo ever needed saving from anybody) but actually so that they could not be put to torture in the trial he knew was coming.

“Well, what did you learn?” I demanded impatiently.

“Three days ago, late in the evening, a slave came from the home of Caius Marcellus and told the slaves in Fulvius’s house that they were to gather whatever personal belongings they had there and return to their master’s house at once. Fulvius wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else.”

Three days ago meant the night before we had found Fulvius murdered. “You say a slave summoned them? Was it the steward?”

“No. She said it was one of Octavia’s staff, a man from her old household before she married Marcellus.”

“Were the other slaves part of Octavia’s staff or dowry?”

“From the way she talked, they were all Marcellus’s property. Do you think it’s important?”

“Hermes, in this case, nothing is too trivial to have significance. Octavia is neck deep in this matter, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean she is playing the same game as her husband.”

The Greek sighed. “Sometimes I wish I were a playwright. This has the dimensions of high tragedy and the complications of low farce.”

“Yes, well, that’s politics for you,” I muttered, half distracted. We were getting near the Forum, and I drew a curtain aside to see what was ahead. There was certainly a lot of noise coming from that direction.

We had taken the most direct route from the ludus: across the Sublician Bridge and through the Forum Boarium, and along the Vicus Tuscus to where it crossed the Via Nova and ended between the Basilica Sempronia and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, near the western end of the Forum. Ahead and to our left I could see the greatest concentration of the crowd, and from that direction came the greatest noise.

“Is that the lady?” Asklepiodes asked.

“The one and only Fulvia,” I said with a sinking heart.

She was on the Rostra, a tiny form still clad in black, gesturing wildly. I saw white-clad men, most likely senators, trying to scale the platform, but other men were pushing them back. I wondered who, with the old gangs broken up, had the insolence to manhandle the Senate.

“I need to get closer,” I said.

“Get us up to the Rostra, lads!” Asklepiodes cried.

“Whatever you say, Doctor!” yelled one. “Let’s go!” And in a blur of flying fists and elbows, the crowd parted magically before us. Within what seemed like only seconds, we were before the railing of the Rostra, its age-darkened ships’ rams looming ominously above. In front and to both sides stood a cluster of senators, lictors, and other attendants trying to shout down the furious woman who harangued the mob from above. I now saw that the men who controlled access to the speaker’s platform wore military belts and boots.

“Oh, no!” I cried, appalled. “She’s got Caesar’s soldiers supporting her and laying hands on the Senate!”

Up on the platform, Fulvia was putting on an amazing show. Her pale hair streamed wildly, tears flowed down her swollen cheeks, her face was scarlet with rage, her mouth was drawn into a long, vertical rectangle, like that on a tragic mask. Also, her sheer, black clothing was in such disarray that she was in imminent danger of losing the upper half entirely.

“Slaves! Cowards! Spineless slugs!” she screamed. “How can you call yourselves Romans? They came to slaughter the man who would be your tribune! They feared him because they knew he would be the defender of your liberties! They fell upon him and now he lies at death’s door because he wanted to be your champion! How can you allow them to live?”